White suburban women have been coveted voters since the 1990s when the term “soccer mom” first came into vogue. They used to be a reliable GOP vote until 2020 when Democrats flipped the script and they became a key element of Joe Biden’s victory.
But while Democrats were drinking champagne and celebrating this major “realignment,” soccer moms in Virginia loaded their kids into their SUVs and stopped off to vote in the 2021 gubernatorial election on the way to practice. They elected Glenn Youngkin, who promised not to indoctrinate their children with critical race theory, and forced teachers and the school board to pay attention to their concerns.
Now, the 2022 election may become known as “The Revenge of the Soccer Moms.” After a short-lived and dubious flirtation with the Democrats, white suburban women are returning to the GOP standard and are looking to unelect a lot of Democrats.
The new survey shows that white women living in suburban areas, who make up 20% of the electorate, now favor Republicans for Congress by 15 percentage points, moving 27 percentage points away from Democrats since the Journal’s August poll. It also suggests that the topic of abortion rights has faded in importance after Democrats saw energy on that issue this summer in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“We’re talking about a collapse, if you will, in that group on the perceptions of the economy,” said Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio who conducted the poll with Democratic pollster John Anzalone. The poll showed that 54% of white suburban women think the U.S. is already in a recession and 74% think the economy is headed in the wrong direction.
Nearly 2 million white suburban women who had voted for Trump in 2016 voted for Biden in 2020. And it wasn’t so much the numbers as it was where those extra votes for Biden were cast.
The three northern battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that Trump flipped Republican in 2016 swung back to the Democrats in 2020, largely because suburban women in key counties flipped from Republican to Democratic. The same was true in Georgia and Arizona. Biden squeaked by in Georgia on the basis of narrow leads in several white-collar counties of Atlanta.
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But the bottom line is the same as it is anywhere else: prices.
A combined 66% of white suburban women also said rising costs are causing a major or minor financial strain, compared with 54% in August.
“It is impacting us personally. I came out with a few grocery bags and I paid $120,” said Susan Smith, 76, of Perkasie, Pa., a Republican who plans to vote for the GOP. “I eat Cheerios every morning and they’ve doubled in price.”
It’s simple, really. For soccer moms, their concerns about inflation trump everything else, including the abortion issue. Of almost equal importance is education. And with Democrats largely silent about the power of teacher’s unions and worrisome curricula involving race, sex, and gender not being cleared by most parents, suburban moms have nowhere else to go but to the GOP — the only party addressing their concerns about prices and education.
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