The Shrinking Electoral Relevance of PA’s Suburbs

Heading into Election Day 2024, the mainstream media breathlessly hyped suburbanites as the voters who will determine the next president of the United States. “Ground zero,” “the whole deal,” and “mini blue wall” were the terms used by pundits to emphasize the importance of suburban voters. But now that the dust has settled, it appears none of that prognostication was accurate. 

Recent data released by the Pennsylvania Department of State indicate that Pennsylvania’s suburban voters didn’t decide the 2024 presidential election, as has been their customary role in the past. In fact, the data reveal that suburban voters were the election’s lagging indicator of a historic political realignment that has reshaped American politics for the foreseeable future.

President Trump won Pennsylvania by more than 120,000 votes for two reasons. Compared to four years ago, a surge of nearly 115,000 voters came exclusively from outside of the suburbs. These voters were decidedly Trump voters. Meantime, remarkably, Philadelphia yielded Trump the largest raw vote shift of the election, with the president gaining nearly 50,000 votes in the city. In other words, rural and exurban anti-establishment voters, along with Philadelphia’s working class, handed the presidency to Trump and delivered a sweep for all statewide Republicans on the ballot.

While the Pennsylvania suburbs saw a shift toward Trump, the president would have still won Pennsylvania without those gains. The trend, moreover, isn’t specific to just Pennsylvania. This trend was likely replicated in all seven swing states won by Trump in 2024. 

The reason the suburbs lost their electoral force may be explained by a recent survey. For the past 30 years, Gallup has tracked partisanship within each political party. The percentage of Republicans who identify as “very conservative” has grown by 33%. The percentage of Democrats who identify as “very liberal” has exploded by 120%. Both Ronald Reagan and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made clear that they didn’t leave the Democratic Party—it was the Democratic Party that left them. Gallup seems to back that up.

The suburbs are home to the highly educated, many of whom climbed the ladder of success through the very institutions that the new majority makers blame for the nation’s decline: finance, government, healthcare, and universities. Suburbanites are beneficiaries of the institutions that working class voters attribute to their stagnation. 

However, the suburban mindset runs much deeper than maintaining the status quo. Most working-class voters cast their ballot with intent, as evidenced for the past decade by the GOP’s inability to win big elections without Trump on the ballot. Suburban voters tend to have a different approach. These highly educated view voting as part of their duty to preserve, protect, and promote institutions.

As institutional technocrats, suburbanites approach voting from the perspective of an unbiased arbitrator weighing the evidence of a case where both sides are incentivized to come toward the middle. These incentives have been absent from our politics for over a decade. Suburbanites are not necessarily to blame for adhering to this approach because that is how politics operated since the suburbs were created after World War II. 

As evidenced by the Gallup survey, Republicans have undoubtedly shifted toward the right, but Democrats have shifted leftward at four times the rate of Republicans. When suburban voters triangulate between these two positions, the “misleading middle” they arbitrate is what “very liberal” voters would have considered extreme just a short time ago.  The left-leaning media consumed by the highly educated certainly reinforces the “misleading middle” as the center.

But there may be hope for electoral relevance in future elections as several factors point toward the suburbs becoming more independent-minded. Trust in the mainstream media, for example, is at an all-time low. The obvious misrepresentation of President Biden’s health was a shock to many, leading to him dropping out of the race—a historical incident without precedent.

Trump declassifying files on the assassinations of President Kennedy, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King may further reveal the extent to which credentialed, gatekeeper media manipulated information over time.   

The “Make America Healthy Again” movement is significantly popular with suburban women.  RFK, Jr’s inclusion in the Trump administration may serve as a bridge to suburban women seeking government policies that reflect their preferred health-conscious lifestyles.   

The acquisition of X by Elon Musk catalyzed a push by social media platforms to condemn government censorship of their platforms and put controls in place to enhance free speech moving forward.

Finally the so-called woke culture, which dominated the institutions that employ many suburbanites, is receding.  Americans agree that awareness of injustices is valid, but it’s not a justification to police the thoughts of others. 

As trust in institutions continues to erode, suburban voters stand at a crossroads, grappling with the shifting political, cultural, and economic landscape.Their preference for institutional stability is being challenged by a new majority demanding transparency, accountability, and reform.  

If suburban voters can reconcile these forces, they may reclaim their role as decisive actors in future elections and shape policy. Or, they may be left behind just as the working class was for generations at their expense.