During the Donald Trump presidency, suburban areas were a goldmine for Democrats. Across the Sun Belt and into the North and West, well educated suburban voters moved sharply toward the Democratic Party. It wasn’t just a thermostatic reaction manifest in the midterm, either. In 2020, college-educated white voters provided the margin of victory for now-President Joe Biden. One could even sense a realignment.
That’s certainly what it looked like in North Carolina’s inner-ring suburbs. After years of trending blue by increments, Wake and Mecklenburg Counties–the heart and soul of suburban N.C.–suddenly became supermajority Democratic. Given the demographics there, a mix of left-leaning in-migrants and well settled college grads repelled by the social conservatism of MAGA nation, observers surmised that Wake and Mecklenburg were now the keystone of any Democratic…
