Suburban Voting Trends: 1948 to 1956

Survey Research Center data on the 1952 and 1956 elections have been divided into three residential belt classifications: (1) central city, (2) suburban, and (3) adjacent to suburban. The residential belts have been grouped both nationally and into large and small population subgroups. Analysis indicates that both nationally and in the large population subgroup the suburban residential belts show small but steady increases in Democratic Party strength. T HE INFLUX of millions of new residents into suburban areas throughout the United States has stimulated considerable conjecture over trends in suburban political party strength. Most of these suburban areas have been Republican Party strongholds, but their characteristics have changed under the impact of large-scale construction of low and middle cost housing, the increase in automobile ownership, more road construction, and the growing decentralization of industry and commerce which have enabled millions of better paid white collar and industrial workers to become suburbanites. Many of the people moving into the suburbs -formerly lived in the "inner or central" city. They or their parents voted heavily (when they voted) for the Democratic Party led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, several new images of the political behavior and preferences of the new suburbanites have been proposed. These people have been pictured as (a) newly won adherents to the Republican Party because of their improved economic and social lot in life, (b) Democratic Party supporters who are afraid to raise their ''political voices" in a suburban Republican sea, (c) adherents of neither major political party, and, occasionally, (d) still voting Democratic.' Greenstein and Wolfinger, studying data collected by the University of Michigan Survey Research Center on the 1952 election concluded: "The differences between urban and suburban political behavior do not appear to be completely explained by the differing distributions of socioeconomic or religious-ethnic characteristics in the two populations. The additional difference may be largely a result of the self-selection of 'Republicanprone' movers to the suburbs, or it may be the result of environmental conversion."2 On the other hand, Manis and Stine raise strong doubts about "political conversions" characterizing suburban life when they declare: "Compared with the importance of political climate, occupation, and religion, suburban residence seems in itself to be politically irrelevant."3 Work of the Survey Research Center on stability of political party preference has led to the conclu* The funds for this study were provided by the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan. The author is indebted to the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan for permission to use Center election data and facilities and to Mrs. Grace Beardsley, Editor of the Institute for Social Research, for her comments and suggestions. This article has been selected from a Ph.D. dissertation completed in 1958 at the University of Michigan under the chairmanship of Professor Amos H. Hawley. The author is now with the University of Illinois. 1 For some of the discussion on suburban voting see: Louis Harris, Is There a Republican Majority? (New York: Harper, 1945); Samuel Lubell, Revolt of thle Moderates (New York: Harper, 1956); William Whyte, Jr., Tlue Organization Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956); William Whyte, Jr., "The Transients," in Llewellyn Miller (ed.), Prize Articles of 1954 (New York: Ballentine Books, 1954); "The Suburban Voter: Which Way Does He Lean?" Newsweek (April 1, 1957), p. 42; Robert Wood, "The New Metropolis," American Political Science Review, 52 (March 1958) pp. 108-122; and Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes, The American Voter (New York: John Wiley, 1960 [Chap. 16, "Population Movement," contains a fine discussion of the political and social characteristics of various streams of migrants.]). 2 Fred Greenstein and Raymond Wolfinger, "The Suburbs and Shifting Party Loyalties," Public Opinion Quarterly, 22 (Winter 1958-1959), pp. 473-482. The quotation appears on p. 482. 3 Jerome Manis and Leo Stine, "Suburban Residence and Political Behavior," Public Opinion Quarterly, 22 (Winter 1958-1959), pp. 483-489. The quotation appears on p. 489. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.203 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 04:17:16 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms