On-the-ground reporting mirrors these national analyses in key places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and my birth-state Texas (including the aforementioned Tarrant County). Over and over again, we see Trump losing ground in relatively diverse, dynamic, and growing areas that don’t want or need protectionist policies—and in fact would probably be hurt by them—and which used to vote Republican. The end result: “Joe Biden made strong gains in the suburbs, including traditionally Republican exurbs. Mr. Trump’s more modest gains in small towns and rural counties weren’t enough to stop swing states—Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and apparently Georgia—from moving into the Democratic column.”
Now, I am not naïve enough to think that Trump’s positions on trade and immigration are what caused Republican-leaning suburbanites to ditch him for Biden, but that’s definitely not the point. The point is that these places (1) won’t generally benefit from economic nationalism; (2) tend to be quite supportive of both “globalization” and immigrants (by significant margins); (3) may have cost Trump the 2020 election; and (4) will likely become more electorally significant in the future because of their disproportionate economic and population growth. Can Trumponomics—with its heavy focus on manufacturing, economic pessimism, and nationalism—win these places back, or can the GOP pin its hopes on just stoking turnout in other places that might be more attracted to such policies? Color me skeptical.
Georgia is probably the poster child for this skepticism, but it’s certainly not alone. For example, Allegheny County—home to the “Steel City” (Pittsburgh) that has long since diversified away from steelmaking—probably sealed President Steel Tariff’s fate in Pennsylvania last week. (Irony abounds!)
And even though Trump won my home state of North Carolina, it provides another good case study. According to the latest population growth projections, almost all of the state’s impressive growth over the next decade will occur in or around four metro areas: Charlotte, the “Triangle” (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill), the “Triad” (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point) and Wilmington. Unsurprisingly, Biden handily won the densest urban/suburban parts of these areas (Wake, Mecklenburg, and Guilford counties), but he also gained in all of the surrounding areas too. In fact, Trump/Republicans lost ground (and Biden gained) in every single one of North Carolina’s top 20 “future growth counties.”