TRENDS: The New Swing Voters Are Suburbanites And Populist, And Both Lean Right.

Brad Todd:

Democrats in 2016 now know their coalition, and their platform, has become too urban and elitist. Hillary Clinton carried each of the nation’s 18 largest cities by large margins—and none of those margins was decisive in changing a single electoral vote. For example, even if she’d tied Trump in New York City, she’d still have won the Empire State’s electoral votes due to her 62,845-vote victory in the rest of the state.

Republicans, meanwhile, saw rock-bottom shares of the suburban vote go for Trump, revealing a vulnerability unseen for the GOP since modern suburbs were invented in the middle of the last century.

Both parties shed an important part of their historic bases in 2016 and their task now is to get them back. Smart analysts looking toward the next election should ask whether it will be easier for Trump to placate his educated affluent defectors in suburban cul-de-sacs or for Democrats to heal the party’s estrangement from white voters outside metropolises.

If Trump can deliver on his promise of Rust Belt jobs, then it won’t matter if he wins the South and the Midwest in 2020 by smaller-than-GOP-normal margins — just like it didn’t matter last month.