Donald Trump has a problem in US suburbs – and it could put his White House run at risk
Donald Trump will face Joe Biden in the US election but something curious that happened in a single suburb could spell trouble.
ANALYSIS
Donald Trump should be on cloud nine.
Last week he had a Super Tuesday landslide, a crucial test of who will be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate going into November’s election.
As he scooped up 14 wins in the 15 states that held primaries that day he swept away his last remaining rival who could have taken that job – former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
And his polling numbers are looking good. There’s every reason to believe the 45th President of the United States could be the 47th as well.
But in Mr Trump’s clear blue sky a grey cloud is forming. And it’s sitting directly above a suburb in the state of Virginia.
It could affect his prospects of reclaiming the keys to the White House.
Alexandria lies on the south side of the Potomac River, which separates the District of Columbia from Virginia. But essentially it’s a suburb of Washington DC – it lies just 13km from the White House.
Founded in 1749, parts of it are lined with historic houses on leafy streets. The further from the river the more Alexandria melts into a typical middle class US suburbia of detached, tidy houses with neat green front lawns interspersed with churches and schools.
After his Super Tuesday triumph, Mr Trump gloated that he had “trounced” Ms Haley – and overall he did.
But not in Alexandria. Here she “trounced” him.
He polled just 26 per cent of the votes while 71 per cent of voters in the area said they wanted Nikki Haley as the Republican presidential candidate.
Alexandria may not be typical – its residents are richer than average and more have been to university.
But there were patterns in the Super Tuesday results. Ms Haley beat her rival outright in a number of contests in areas that included cities and their inner ring suburbs, like Alexandria, or had university educated residents. Among others, Ms Haley won in Washington DC itself, Denver and Boulder in Colorado and Fairfax County, Charlottesville and Richmond in Virginia.
In contests in suburbs further away from the CBDs, Mr Trump often won. But Mr Haley was close behind. In Loudon County, where Washington’s sprawl fades into the Blue Ridge Mountains, his vote was 52 per cent; Henrico County, which covers the northern suburbs of Richmond was at 44 per cent for Ms Haley, while in Dakota County, which covers Minneapolis’ south east suburbs, she got more than a third of the vote.
In large counties that included both the inner cities and more distant suburban areas, Ms Haely often overperformed. In Charlotte, North Carolina, 45 per cent of voters picked her. In Salt Lake City in Utah, she eked out a win at 52 per cent.
Some Republicans say they won’t vote for Trump
Following the often bruising nomination process it’s generally thought most of the party faithful will get behind the chosen nominee.
But Mr Trump may have a problem in America’s middle ring and outer suburbs where he could struggle to convert all of Ms Haley’s voters into his. Polling shows a chunk of Republicans want nothing to do with him.
A NBC News poll of voters after they’d cast their ballots on Super Tuesday found 31 per cent of those in Virginia, 34 per cent in North Carolina and 33 per cent in California said they would not vote for Mr Trump.
“Most of Haley’s vote is anti-Trump, not pro-Haley,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican who is part of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project told website Politico.
A similar number said if Mr Trump was found guilty of a crime he would not be fit to be President.
Pro Trump voices would differ.
They have pointed to Mr Trump’s positive showing in swing states like Arizona – which contains the sunny suburban sprawl of Phoenix – and Georgia which includes Atlanta.
“You don’t win those states without doing well in the suburbs,” Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster said to ABC in January after the Iowa caucus.
In addition, Democratic Party members could vote in Virginia’s Republican primary which could theoretically change the outcome but likely only in a close contest.
But polling in the last week by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and Mainstreet Research indeed found Mr Trump underperformed with university educated whites as well as women in general. But he was more competitive with Mr Biden for Hispanic votes.
While a number of polls have given Mr Trump a recent edge over Joe Biden nationally, the FAU/Mainstreet poll was a toss-up between the two.
Mr Biden has a small advantage in Colorado and Virginia, it found, while Mr Trump was losing his lead in Utah.
These were three states where Ms Haley beat Mr Trump in some cities sand suburban areas on Super Tuesday.
‘Not coming home’
“Because of how unique the former president is, and how well held beliefs are about him, we don’t know to what extent the voters choosing to vote for Nikki Haley or somebody else are likely to come home,” FAU pollster and political scientist Kevin Wagner said to USA Today papers.
“Many have expressed that they are not going to come home.”
Although, Mr Wagner stresses, opinions may change come November.
Suburban women are part of the obstacle on Mr Trump’s road to the White House.
It’s why in Mr Biden’s State of the Union address – days after Super Tuesday – reproductive rights featured heavily. Team Biden can only have looked on with glee after a Republican state effectively banned IVF treatment last month after a state court ruled that destroying a frozen embryo was akin to causing a death.
Pointedly, when Ms Haley suspended her campaign, gifting the candidacy to Mr Trump, she did not endorse him.
Rather, she said she would keep her powder dry to see if he would bring her supporters into his tent.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and those beyond it to support him.
“I hope he does that.”
At around about the same time, Mr Trump was sending out that social media poster about how he had “TROUNCED” (all caps) Ms Haley in “record setting fashion” and that her campaign was funded by “radical left Democrats”.
Mr Biden, meanwhile, praised the former ambassador’s “courage” for running and that “there was a place” for her supporters in his campaign.
Trump could win anyway
None of this means Mr Trump will lose the election.
He may yet succeed in bringing in wider groups of voters. Perhaps with an eye on suburban wary women voters he quickly rubbished the IVF ruling in Alabama.
Even if he doesn’t, he is wildly popular with blue collar Republicans and Team Trump may have calculated they can lose a few white collar votes if they make up the numbers elsewhere.
Besides, party operatives say, while he may have lost some suburbs during the primaries, he has won many more.
Yes, he may be deeply unpopular with some voters – but so is Mr Biden. The US economy may be doing well, unemployment is lower and inflation down, but the President seems to be getting little credit for that. Meanwhile, immigration and the Mexican border is a hot topic.
If Mr Trump can persuade some who ticked Biden in 2020 to come back to him – and if unengaged Democrats stay at home on polling day – it may be enough.
“The swing voters in 2020 that decided to pull the lever for Biden were thinking much more with their hearts than they were with their heads or with their wallets,” Republican pollster Robert Blizzard said.
“Now, I think a lot of those voters are now thinking with their heads and with their wallets.”
Mr Trump has ridden a wave of momentum to all but secure the candidacy with core Republicans as excited as ever about him.
But he will want to hope that the voters in the leafy suburbs of DC, Virginia, Colorado and Utah are not a warning sign of things to come.
“In an election that is likely to be very close,” said Mr Wagner, “if a good number of those non-Trump voters do not return to the former president then he is going to have a tough time”.
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