Why Big-City Dominance Is a Problem for Democrats
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election by rebuilding the “blue wall,” not around any particular geographical region, but around every major U.S. metropolitan area. America’s biggest cities and their largest suburbs are now Jerichos of the Democratic Party, walled fortresses for the future of liberalism.
Biden won all of the 20 largest cities in America. He dominated on the coasts, racking up more than 80 percent of the vote in Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. He won metro Atlanta by about 800,000 votes and took the four major metro areas of Texas—Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin—by more than 900,000 votes.
As well as Biden fared in these cities, however, he did even better, relative to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 showing, in their suburbs. An analysis of the 2020 presidential vote by the economist Jed Kolko found that it was almost entirely of large metros—not their downtown areas—that swung toward Democrats from 2016 to 2020.
