Can’t We All Get Together?

Posted by Carol Coletta on January 18, 2009 |

More from the brilliant Nate Silver's column from Esquire... "...suburban voters are starting to look — and behave — more like their urban brethren. According to a poll by the National Center for Suburban Studies, 20 percent of suburban voters are nonwhite — not much behind the national average of 27 percent — and 44 percent live in a racially mixed neighborhood (versus a national average of 46 percent).

"Suburban voters are just as likely to be concerned about the economy as other voters are and just as likely to know someone who has lost a job. Moreover... at least eight to nine million persons commute into urban areas each day. As a result, urban bashing isn't what it once was at the height of white flight and the Reagan revolution. Whereas in 1980... 24.4 percent of Americans thought that the government was spending too much money to solve the problems of big cities, nowadays that number is down to 12.8 percent. The suburbs are immune to neither urban America's problems nor its promise."

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