GOP needs suburban voters in 2024 election

On April 4, liberal Janet Protasiewicz defeated conservative Daniel Kelly for a seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court. Coverage of Protasiewicz’s victory focused on her pro-choice abortion stance and what it might mean for the future of pro-life politics. The conservatives and Republicans ought to be just as worried about Protasiewicz’s success in the suburbs. Daniel Kelly, the conservative, failed to mobilize the GOP vote in Wisconsin’s W.O.W. counties: Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington. While Kelly did win these historically Republican Milwaukee suburbs, he did so by considerably smaller margins than Republican Senator Ron Johnson did in 2022. Johnson, for example, won Waukesha County by 25 points. Kelly won by 16. Johnson won Ozaukee County by 16 points. Kelly won by four. And Johnson won Washington County by 42 points. Kelly won by 32. The drop off cost Kelly the election. If Republicans dominate in rural precincts, and Democrats in urban enclaves, then the suburbs are majority makers. Yet the suburbs had been receding from the GOP since the dawn of the Trump era. For example, in 2014, the last election before Trump descended on his escalator, Republicans won the suburban vote 55% to 45%. They won both the white non-college vote and the white college vote by double digits. They won voters making between $50,000 per year and $100,000 per year by 10 points. 

By the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, majorities among suburban white voters near the middle of the income distribution fueled the GOP’s greatest electoral strength in close to a century. Unease over Donald Trump shrank this coalition in 2016, Republicans won suburbs by five points, white non-college voters by 39 points, white college voters by four points, and middle income voters by four points. That gave Trump the electoral college but not a popular vote majority. Then Trump entered office. He retained his support among white voters without college degrees in 2018. But the remaining pillars of Republican rule crumbled beneath him. White voters with college degrees voted for Democrats by four points. Middle Income voters went for Democrats by two points, and the suburbs turned against Republicans, voting democratic by 11 points. The same pattern was visible in the 2020 results. Trump won non-college white votes, though by a smaller margin than four years earlier. White college voters went for Joe Biden by seven points. Middle-income voters split evenly between the parties, and the suburbs voted for Biden by 10 points. 

In 2022, non-college white voters turned out for Republicans once more, but Democrats won white college voters by one point and the suburbs by one point. Middle-income voters returned to the Republican column, 52% to 45%. And these narrowing demographic gaps produced the mixed result of a Republican House and the Democratic Senate. If Republicans were serious about winning Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin in 2024, and thus the White House, they would try to add white voters with college degrees in suburban America to their non-college rural base. To do so, however, they would have to replace Donald Trump as party leader. They would have to find a nominee who is pro-life and who can speak about issues such as abortion in a non-threatening way. They would have to learn the lessons not only of Wisconsin, but of every election cycle since 2016. And they would have to move quickly, before 2024 escapes the GOP’s grasp.