Why Trump’s Suburban Strategy Failed
Did Black and brown cities deliver Democrats the election? Yes — and so did Black and brown suburbs.
At first, the nation could barely take its eyes off of Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix and Milwaukee, as their record number of votes were carefully tallied. In the aftermath of the historic U.S. presidential election, several political commentators rightly credited the role of Black and brown voters in the cities of key states in bringing home the win for Democrats, and possibly the Senate.
But in the torturous five days after the election, people also learned how to pronounce Gwinnett County — one of America’s most diverse suburbs — after having watched Black, Latinx and Asian Americans wait in hours-long lines to vote outside strip malls in Georgia. They pulled out maps to locate Bucks and Lackawanna counties in Pennsylvania. It was not just Black and brown cities in swing states that brought Democrats their victories; it was also their suburbs. Across the nation, suburbs moved further blue than in 2016, particularly in key battleground states.