Just nine weeks from the presidential election, most voters have made up their minds. Black voters reliably vote Democrat while most white men vote Republican, but data shows that many suburban women are among the few voters still in play and could have the power to swing the election.
If this sounds like an exaggeration, rewind to 2016 and recall the razor thin margin by which President Trump won critical battleground states – Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – by a total of 107,000 votes.
Had those 107,000 voters cast their ballots differently, the outcome of the election would have been different. And therein lies their power.
Despite having won the suburbs by 5% in 2016, President Trump’s support there eroded by the 2018 midterms, and a blue wave flipped 38 suburban congressional districts to put Nancy Pelosi in the speaker’s chair.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows this bloc is leaning Biden, which is why Team Trump has been making a concerted, and aggressive, effort to get them back.
This week, speakers at the Republican National Convention is making a hard appeal to suburban swing voters.
A recent NPR/PBSNewsHour/Marist poll shows suburban women already prefer Biden on the economy, COVID and race relations, so Team Trump is focusing on a different message: law and order.
Speakers at the Republican National Convention have allied Democrats with “rioters” and “looters” promoting “lawlessness.”
Patricia McCloskey, a St. Louis attorney who gained internet fame when she and her husband pointed loaded guns at protesters who passed their property while marching to the St Louis Mayor’s house, took the first swing, claiming Democrats, “are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities, they want to abolish the suburbs all-together by ending single-family home zoning. This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low-quality apartments into thriving suburban neighborhoods.”
Wednesday night, Vice President Pence echoed those claims, saying, “The hard truth is you will not be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”
And Thursday, President Trump drove the point home: “If the Radical Left takes power, he claimed, “they will apply their disastrous policies to every city, town, and suburb in America.”
Joe Biden responded to these attacks Thursday, telling NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that Trump is “rooting for more violence not less.”
When asked to explain, Biden cited a Fox News interview with White House advisor Kellyanne Conway who said “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”
It’s unclear how effective the law and order message will prove to be. A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll shows for 42% of undecided suburban women, the economy will be the major factor in deciding their votes.
