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Philly suburbs' vote trends are bad news for GOP
G. TERRY MADONNA and MICHAEL YOUNG
Pennsylvania has conducted some big elections lately: presidential races, gubernatorial races, and congressional races. So, it might surprise some to learn that the next big electoral contest in Pennsylvania is not a high-stakes federal or state race. It's a struggle for control of a few courthouses in the Philadelphia suburbs. Historically, these are low-cost, low-interest affairs. Not this year!
The elections in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties have huge implications for the political future of Pennsylvania. Why? Because of Pennsylvania's tradition of strong local political parties. The party that controls county government often is the party that will be successful in state and federal elections. That matters this year because, for the first time in decades, the Philly suburbs are up for grabs.
For decades, the support of these suburban Philadelphia counties has been crucial to GOP success statewide. Republicans needed the suburbs. But, beginning in the 1990s, the suburbs began to tilt toward Democrats the very important presidential, statewide, and congressional elections.
Presidential: Bill Clinton carried three of the four suburban counties in both 1992 and 1996. Al Gore and John Kerry also won three of the four in 2000 and 2004 by even larger margins. The Democrats' increasing share of the presidential vote tell the story. Their portion of the vote in presidential elections during the 1980s did not exceed 40 percent. But by 2000, the Democrats carried the four counties by 53 percent and in 2004 by 54 percent.
Statewide: In statewide elections, the Democrats also have the Republicans on the run. Gov. Ed Rendell's election and re-election were routs in the suburbs; he had more than 70 percent of the vote there in 2006. Last year, U.S. Democratic Senate candidate Bob Casey won all four counties against Republican Rick Santorum. In 2004, Casey was elected state treasurer winning all four counties, while the same year, Democratic auditor general candidate Jack Wagner won two of them and lost a third by one point.
Congressional: Republicans in the 1990s at one point held the four suburban U.S. House seats; they now hold one. Two of the losses came last year. For the first time in history, the Democrats hold the congressional district seats that ring Philadelphia.
Both demographic and ideological forces underlie the erosion of GOP support. Suburban voters, many whose parents or grandparents adopted the Republican Party when they fled Philadelphia, have become more willing to vote for Democrats. They are boosted by in-migration from new voters, of whom many are employed in the high-tech, health-care, and financial institutions that have less allegiance to the Republican Party. Suburban voters are markedly more moderate on the great social questions of the day, especially abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and federal funding of stem-cell research. While still fiscally conservative, suburban voters are restive in a party often dominated by social conservatives.
These trends are as ominous for Republicans as they are sanguine for Democrats. Even more important, however, they are pregnant with political implications for Pennsylvania's role in regional and national politics. Three consequences are likely if the Democrat trend continues in the suburbs.
1. Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties will become the new key to political power in the state. Neither political party will be able to win statewide without substantial support from them.
2. Pennsylvania's traditional role as a competitive, two-party state will be weakened with further Democratic gains in the suburbs. Particularly in danger could be the state's much vaunted ''eight-year cycle'' that has regularly alternated the governorship between Democratic or Republican candidates for a half a century. Without the suburbs, the GOP cannot hope to regularly win gubernatorial office.
3. The loss of the suburbs by the Republican Party would likely mean that Pennsylvania's role as a swing state in presidential elections would end abruptly. With the Philadelphia suburbs gone, national GOP candidates could not hope to win Pennsylvania, and the state would likely go the way of other northeastern states -- dark blue on political maps.
Improbably enough, a handful of local races in an off-year election may shape the course of state politics for some time. Should one or more of the Philly suburban counties go Democratic this year, it will portend bleak prospects for future Republican hopes.
G. Terry Madonna, Ph.D., is professor of public affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. Michael Young, Ph.D., is managing partner of Michael Young Strategic Research in Harrisburg.
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Posted 30 May, 2007
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