"America’s Last Politically Contested Territory: The Suburbs"
Americas Last Politically Contested Territory: The Suburbs
by Joel Kotkin at the Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/21/america-s-last-politically-contested-territory-the-suburbs.html
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Obamas success resulted from demographic changes sweeping the periphery of most major cities. Long derided by blue-state intellectuals as stultifying breeders of homogeneous white bread, the suburbs increasingly reflect and shape the countrys ethnic diversification. The majority of foreign-born Americans now live in suburbs, and many suburban townslike Plano, Texas, outside Dallas; Cerritos, south of Los Angeles; and Bellevue, near Seattlehave become more ethnically diverse than their corresponding core cities. Among the metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of suburban minority growth are swing state regions Des Moines, Iowa; Milwaukee; and Allentown and Scranton, Pa.
Minorities, according to a recent Brookings study now represent 35 percent of suburban residents, similar to their share of overall U.S. population.
The suburbs of Las Vegas in hotly contested Nevada are now minority-majority, as the number of Latinos living there has shot up. Nationwide, well over 5 million Latinos moved to the suburbs during the past decadeand many more Latinos now live in suburbs than core cities. In the past, Hispanic suburbanites tended to vote somewhat more Republican than their urban counterparts. But this year, they appear to be solidly Democraticas Latinos have been repelled by the GOPs ugly embrace of nativism ,and drawn to Obamas clever election-year move to offer effective amnesty to young illegal immigrants.
Asiansanother group thats strongly favored Obamahave moved even more quickly into the suburbs. While many immigrants hail from some of the worlds densest cities, few immigrants come to America dreaming of a small apartment near a transit stop.
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