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September 26, 2024 - 4:45pm
A new Siena College/New York Times poll is the latest to point to a new trend in the presidential race. While Democratic candidate Kamala Harris continues to maintain small leads in the Rust Belt, she has begun to lag behind in the Sun Belt — the region of America that includes Southern states such as Georgia and North Carolina as well as Arizona out in the Southwest.
Trump maintains a five-point lead in Arizona and a four-point lead in Georgia. In North Carolina, meanwhile, he sits a couple of points above Harris. These leads are becoming durable, with numerous polls now showing Trump ahead in the Sun Belt. This would serve as a reversal of 2020, where he lost both Arizona and Georgia to Joe Biden.
One explanation for this new trend is that the Sun Belt has become increasingly less affordable during the last few years. While ample numbers of people from the rest of the country continue to move to states such as Arizona or Georgia in order to work or retire, these states have experienced a considerable decrease in housing affordability relative to where they were in years past.
One recent analysis found that about 25% of households in 104 Georgia counties are spending 30% or more of their income on housing. In Cobb County, the suburban locale outside Atlanta where I grew up, the median home sale price hit $500,000 for the first time ever in June.
In many ways, the Sun Belt is a victim of its own success. Land is much cheaper and more abundant than in coastal regions of the country. Taxes are relatively low, and building new housing is fairly easy. But the massive influx of people from the rest of the country is slowly making these locations more expensive to live in — especially when compounded by the inflation of recent years.
Declining affordability may be linked to another reason why Trump is rebounding in the region, however. The former president continues to poll well above previous Republican presidential candidates when it comes to the diversity of his vote. This week’s New York Times poll finds that he is receiving about 40% of the Hispanic vote across these three Sun Belt states, a number that keeps him competitive in each of them.
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SubscribeQuite an achievement to write an entire article about Trump’s growing popularity in the southern states without once mentioning mass illegal immigration.
The Dems shot themselves in the foot by sticking with Biden for so long and then installing the DEI candidate Kamala when nobody could deny that Biden was a lost cause.
As the post ditching Biden bounce declining trends continue a massive landslide for Trump becomes a possibility.
Speaking as far-right racist living in the US I’d say that Hispanics are on a solid course to get into the middle class as fast as possible. That will turn them into eevil Trump Republicans and Democrats will soon discover, experts agree, that Hispanics have been far-right insurrectionists all along.