Battle For The Suburbs Playing Out Between President Trump & Democratic Challenger Biden
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – President Trump and Joe Biden both have their eye on one very large group of voters: Americans living in the suburbs.
A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development survey finds more than half of all Americans identify as suburbanites, and election watchers caution against broad generalizations about how this group will vote in 2020.
With the HUD study finding 52% of Americans identifying as suburban dwellers, President Trump has been sharpening his message to suburbanites. The president claims a Joe Biden victory will mean more crime and more low-income housing.
"I'm about law and order. I'm about having you safe. I'm about having your suburban communities, I don't wanna build to low-income housing next to your house, OK, if that's OK," the president said.
President Trump took a similar hardline on immigration during the 2016 campaign and narrowly won suburban voters.
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But Biden argues he knows the suburbs better.
"I was raised in the suburbs. This is not 1950. All these dog whistles and racism don't work anymore. Suburbs are by and large integrated," he said.
That's also what Case Western Reserve University professor Kathryn Lavelle has observed.
"If we learned anything in the last election, I think we learned the difficulties of pigeonholing voters. Here's a White woman in the suburbs, here's an African American male in the city," she said.
In the final stretch of the campaign, both candidates will be battling it out for the suburbs, where voters have a big role in choosing the next president.
