The Look of a Possible Republican Majority

From the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — The center of the Republican presidential coalition is moving toward the distant edges of suburbia.

In this month's election, President Bush carried 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties, most of them "exurban" communities that are rapidly transforming farmland into subdivisions and shopping malls on the periphery of major metropolitan areas.

Together, these fast-growing communities provided Bush a punishing 1.72 million vote advantage over Democrat John F. Kerry, according to a Times analysis of election results. That was almost half the president's total margin of victory.

"These exurban counties are the new Republican areas, and they will become increasingly important to Republican candidates," said Terry Nelson, the political director for Bush's reelection campaign. "This is where a lot of our vote is."

...The problem for Democrats is that in almost all metropolitan areas the distant Republican strongholds are growing much faster than either the cities or the inner suburbs.

Big Democratic-leaning suburbs like Oakland County in Michigan, Montgomery and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania and Fairfax in Virginia all grew by about 3% or less from 2000 through 2003, according to the Census Bureau. Big urban counties like Wayne (Detroit), Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Philadelphia all lost population over that period.

But all of the 100 counties that the Census Bureau listed as fastest-growing increased their population by at least 12% during that same time. With each election, they are producing more votes to offset Democratic advantages in the cities and inner suburbs.

Bush's popularity in the high-growth counties propelled his victory in Florida, brought him close to winning in Minnesota and largely thwarted Kerry's hopes of competing in Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia, despite solid Democratic performances in more urban areas.

In Ohio, the two counties on the top 100 list — Warren, north of Cincinnati, and Delaware, north of Columbus — provided Bush a combined margin of nearly 67,000 votes, helping him overcome unprecedented Democratic turnout in Cleveland and the rest of Cuyahoga County.