Shifting Demographics Tilt Presidential Races in American Suburbs

[mahatmakanejeeves]

There was a nice article in The Wall Street Journal. the other day, featuring, of all places, Leesburg and Loudoun County. The Loudoun County board of supervisors is all-Republican, including Eugene Delgaudio.

Shifting Demographics Tilt Presidential Races in American Suburbs

Younger, More Affluent New Residents Are Reshaping the Vote in Metropolitan Regions of Denver, Atlanta, Washington, D.C.

By Elizabeth Williamson and Dante Chinni
April 30, 2014 10:32 p.m. ET

LEESBURG, Va.—This was a pastoral, conservative Washington suburb until a decade ago, when new jobs sprouting in and around the U.S. capital began drawing younger, more affluent people like Bill and Heather King.

Mr. King, a traffic engineer, and Dr. King, a hospital pediatrician, sought to live among other young professionals in a place with the vibrancy of their urban hometowns—qualities they say they found in this former colonial hamlet.

Not long ago, the couple, both 33 years old, might have skipped over Leesburg, the seat of Loudoun County. But the self-described "Democratic-leaning" Kings are among a new crop of residents sinking roots in formerly reliable Republican Party strongholds, reshaping older suburbs in the metropolitan regions of Denver; Columbus, Ohio; Atlanta; Washington and elsewhere.
....

Politically, Democrats see opportunity; Republicans see a challenge. Growth in mature suburbs has helped the Democrats in presidential contests.

A sidebar to that article contains a link to this article:

Newcomers Move a Virginia County From Red to Blue

7:25 am ET
May 1, 2014
Politics Counts

By Dante Chinni

Dante Chinni, who writes Politics Counts, is the director of the American Communities Project at American University, which examines different types of communities across the U.S.

To understand the political shift that has pushed many big suburban counties into the Democratic column in recent presidential elections, Virginia’s Loudoun County is a good place to start.

As we wrote in The Wall Street Journal, Loudoun’s swing to Democratic candidates over the last decade represents a larger shift among counties the Brookings Institution labels as Mature Suburbs. In 2000, Loudoun went for then-Texas Governor George W. Bush by about 16 percentage points. By 2012, it had voted twice for Barack Obama.

So how does a county like Loudoun swing so fast from red to blue? Some of it has to do with migration patterns, who moves into a county and who moves out. The 2007-2011 American Community Survey from the U.S. Census shows Loudoun’s inflows in recent years have had a blue tint.

[williesgirl]

1. I need it to come out as far as Front Royal!