New suburban politics: a county?based analysis of metropolitan voting trends since 2000

This chapter looks at voting patterns in the American suburbs in the national elections of 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. Understanding these patterns is critical to understanding future elections, because the suburbs are now quasi urban and home to over half of the U.S. population.(1) Although it was once reasonably assumed that Republican voters predominated in the suburbs, these areas are now highly contested electorally.