Joe Biden came out on top in the 2020 elections, but his approval rating has fallen steadily since he actually arrived in the White House. Recent polling even shows that he would lose to his predecessor if the two contenders went head-to-head once again in 2024 – and a good portion of that newfound support comes from a surprising source: Donald Trump is winning back suburban women.
The Rebound
Back in October 2020, Emerson College Polling found that Biden had a 14% lead on Trump. The latest Emerson poll found an overall 59% favorability for Trump, compared to 39% for Biden. Even in the suburbs, respondents favored Trump (57%) over Biden (42%). That’s quite the reversal.
A Big Data poll gave Trump a 7% suburban lead over Biden. It has been one of the more accurate pollsters in recent presidential elections. Harris Poll gave Trump an advantage of 9%, and even McLaughlin and Associates had him up by 1%.
As a caveat, the further away from an election a poll is taken, the less accurate it tends to be. Many voters use polls to express momentary disapproval but often revert to their long-term position at the ballot box. Nevertheless, these surveys spell a massive political earthquake and a possible reversal of a two-decade-long political trend toward the left.
Joe and Hunter Biden (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Changing Trends
Election analyzers agreed that Trump’s crude style was off-putting to many women, especially in the crucial suburban upper-middle class. Voters who were otherwise sympathetic to his political positions backed Biden instead, largely because they disliked Trump's personal behavior. Of course, the Russian collusion and "fine people" hoaxes didn’t help, either. Still, suburbia has been trending left for nearly two decades. Other factors, such as demographic changes and secularization, have occurred independently of Trump, and his personality may well have only accelerated a trend that was already manifesting. All that makes the recent survey results even more shocking.
The Causes
Most of the causes for this are not hard to identify. The botched Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden’s failing mental faculties, the border crisis, and massive inflation have pushed the president’s approval rating off a cliff. In addition, information about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the Russian collusion hoax has slowly seeped out even among Democratic voters.
However, one factor may be more important than any of these: parents dissatisfied with Democrat-led schools because of COVID-19 closings or woke ideology in the classroom. Suburban women may not like Trump’s style, but mama bears get angry when their cubs are threatened. In the recent Virginia gubernatorial election, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin won thanks to a suburban surge, and that may be an omen of things to come in the 2024 presidential election.
~ Read more from Caroline Adana.
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