New Geography

Category: Demographics

  • New Census Data on Cities

    US Census released the latest population data on cities this week. Looking at the top 15 largest US cities, only Sunbelt cities of Phoenix, San Antonio, Houston, and Jacksonville are ahead of the national rate since 2000. Interestingly, the cities of San Francisco and San Jose are making a recent comeback after losses early this decade, although San Francisco is still trailing its year 2000 mark.

    Tory Gattis explains the situation in Houston, where the population of the city has exploded since 2005.

    The fastest growing larger city overall since 2000 is Raleigh, followed by a pile of places in warm climates, two in the Denver metro, along with plains cities of Omaha and Oklahoma City.

    Many California cities fill out the smaller cities list, along with two from the Chicago metro and Olathe and Sioux Falls on the plains.

  • Moving from the Cities to the Suburbs… and Beyond

    The current concern over soaring gas prices has raised serious questions about the sustainability of what we commonly consider “the American dream”. Some urban boosters and environmentalists seem positively giddy about the prospects that suburbanites, reeling under the impact of high-energy prices, will soon be forced to give up their cars, backyards and highly regarded privacy for the pleasures of crowded multi-family homes and commutes on packed public transit to jobs downtown.

    This is part of a profoundly nostalgic notion that we can return to the 19th Century idyll .It is a kind of dream world where everyone walks on bustling streets, greeting their neighbors who sit on the front porch or hang out on a brownstone stoop. Of course, any serious student of history knows that life in urban America was hardly so idyllic — with families of five or more packed into tiny three-room apartments in neighborhoods often characterized by gangs, unsanitary conditions and limited economic opportunities.

    One generally does not expect newspaper reporters to know, much less understand history. However, it would be nice if they bothered to look even at the recent facts. Yet to read The New York Times, the Washington Post and even The Wall Street Journal, you would think there is a mass movement out of automobiles into mass transit. Yet, in reality, they rarely note that the decline in driving is more than 30 times the increase in transit ridership.

    This is not to deny that transit ridership, after decades of relative decline, is rising, but statistically it remains relatively insignificant. That is because transit’s market share, outside New York, is barely one percent. However, why shouldn’t people take transit if it is a viable alternative to the car? The problem is that how we live, work and shop in most places simply does not work with transit; other trends, like a shift to cars that are more efficient, telecommuting and working closer to home all seem far more likely to shape our future transportation pattern.

    But where the really far off is with respect to demographic trends — where people are moving. Readers are continuously misled about the imagined return of people from the suburbs to the city. The claim is that this has being going on since before energy prices really spiked but has become even more pronounced now.

    The demographic reality is quite at odds with these assertions, even now. For one thing suburbanization never was principally about moving from cities to suburbs, it was more about moving from small town and rural areas to the suburbs. Even in St. Louis, which has lost more of its population than any city since the Romans sacked Carthage, most new suburban residents were not from the city.

    More critically, an examination of metropolitan county domestic migration data from 2000 to 2007 simply fails to show any demonstrable back-to-the-city movement. We examined domestic migration in 47 metropolitan areas of the nation with more than 1,000,000 population (four metropolitan areas were excluded, see file). Here is what the data show:

    • Core counties of metropolitan areas continue to lose domestic migrants and have done so every year of this decade. There have been ups and downs, but in 2006-2007, more than 500,000 people moved out of core counties. Every year in the decade, from 34 to 39 of the 47 core counties have lost domestic migrants. In 2006-2007, 37 core counties lost domestic migrants.
    • Suburban counties of metropolitan areas continue to gain domestic migrants and have done so every year of this decade. The trend has been generally downward, with more than a net 400,000 migration gain in 2000-2001, falling to a gain of 180,000 in 2006-2007. Every year in the decade, from suburban counties in 33 to 40 of the 47 metropolitan areas have gained domestic migrants. In 2006-2007, suburban domestic migration gains occurred in 33 metropolitan areas.
    • Domestic migration was greater (or losses were lower) in the suburban counties of 39 of the 47 metropolitan areas in 2006-2007. During the decade, this figure has ranged from 38 to 42.

    The decline in domestic migration to the suburbs, however, does not suggest that people are moving back to the city. On the contrary, it may suggest even greater decentralization as people move from the suburbs, as well as core cities, of major metropolitan areas to smaller urban areas and perhaps even rural areas. Perhaps it is being made possible by advances in information technology and telecommuting. To some degree, it is people “voting with their feet” often due to high housing prices, failing schools and congested conditions even in suburbs of large metropolitan centers.

    Basically, from a statistical point of view, there is simply no hard evidence of any material movement of people from suburbs to cities. Between 2000 and 2007, millions of people moved from the most expensive housing markets to more affordable markets — in many times prices made worse by land use policies commonly imposed in some areas.

    The reality is that people are adaptable to changing conditions. They will work to preserve the lifestyles they prefer. They will buy more fuel efficient cars; they will work and recreate closer to home. A decade from now, we will likely find that the reports of suburban demise will be greatly exaggerated once again.

  • The Three Geographies

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    Officials in both Presidential campaigns, as well as analysts like Michael Barone, tell us that it is time to “throw out the map”. Yet if we are about the jettison the broad “red” and “blue” markers, perhaps we should explore a very different geographic matrix for this election.

    We believe Americans’ political perspective — if not the final voting behavior — is largely shaped not so much by their state but by the type of place, they reside in. These define much about an area, such as how many people are homeowners, take transit, have children living at home, the preponderance of middle class households, and the extent economic and racial diversity.

    Although not uniform across the country, we believe the most effective breakdown of how Americans live can be seen in three basic geographic forms — the urban, suburban and what we call “small town/rural”. These geographies show significant differences in almost all major characteristics, including in voting behavior. And even when voting for the same party, they often do so with different motivations.

    Democrats in the small cities and towns of the Great Plains, for example, closely follow issues related to agricultural and infrastructure policies that help expand economic opportunities, including energy development. In contrast, urban politics in places like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco tend to have a far greener tinge and concern with social issues such as gay marriage.

    Over the next three months, we plan to break down the country by these three geographies and posit how they live may affect their vote. First thing to do is estimate the size of these three geographies. Examining the census, we believe that urban centers — that is core cities of our nation’s large metropolitan areas — represent roughly 32% percent of the total population. The rural/small town component, in many ways the opposite of the urban core, represents roughly 17 percent.

    By far the largest percentage of Americans lives in the third geography, the suburbs. Located between the rural edges and the urban cores, this is where Americans have been migrating with remarkable consistency for over a half century. Despite varied attempts to proclaim a “back to the land” or “back to the city” movements, through oil price rises and declines, suburbs have shown no long-term sign of secular shrinking. In fact, during the last six years, roughly 90% of all growth in metropolitan areas has taken place there

    If suburbs, with roughly 51% percent of the population, represent the largest geography, they also, not surprisingly, are most representative of the nation as a whole. Once overwhelmingly white, they now have a racial breakdown far closer to the national norm than either cities, which are much more heavily minority, or rural/small towns, which are considerably less so.

    Perhaps more importantly, suburbs tend to have higher concentration of middle class voters than the other geographies. This may explain in part why the suburbs, particularly the outer ring, bore the initial brunt of the mortgage crisis — suburban households are fifty percent more likely to be owner-occupied but also generally endure higher prices than rural/small town residents. Although their commutes, particularly on the fringes, are not markedly longer than those of urbanities are, they are more dependent on their cars than those who live in such transit oriented cities as New York, Chicago and Boston.

    Higher gas prices and the problems with suburban mortgages have some representatives of urban America convinced that their return to national preeminence is imminent. In the last energy crisis during the 1970s, pundits also predicted a similar “back to the city” parade but this did not occur. Actually, over time companies moved their facilities to the suburbs where their workers already had migrated. People also changed their driving habits, most conspicuously by tossing out their gas-guzzlers for more economic models, largely produced by Japanese firms.

    Other factors should temper urban enthusiasm as well. For one thing, despite the much-ballyhooed revival of central cities, urban areas remain home to most of the highest concentrations of poverty in the nation. What characterizes urban areas, even relatively successful ones such as Chicago, New York and San Francisco, has been their growing bifurcation between extremes of rich and poor. Some , less fabled cities, such as Pittsburgh, even are suffering the ultimate demographic indignity: more people are dying than being born.

    However, in one way urban areas are clearly ascendant: politics. Cities by their nature tend to create coherent, high articulate political, media and economic voices. In contrast, suburban governance generally rests with highly decentralized legislative bodies or in the hands of bland professional managers. Urban America boasts very effective lobbyists and cheerleaders, through both media-savvy Mayors like Michael Bloomberg in New York; well-endowed think tanks, tapping old money sources and developers, serve to promote urban interests. Suburbs, in contrast, generally lack any sense of self-awareness and lack the institutional support to promote their cause.

    A Barack Obama presidency could provide a shot of adrenalin to the urban lobby. Senator Obama illustrates some of the most attractive parts of urbanism such as ethnic diversity, sophistication and a well-articulated commitment to social justice. He also epitomizes some the most turpitudinous, reflected by his ties to the sleazy Chicago machine and links to rent-seeking real estate interests who increasingly, along with public employee unions, dominate urban politics.

    Senator Obama’s dominance of the urban geography was complete throughout the primaries and is likely to consolidate even further during the general election. More than any time in the last half-century, Republicans, and even moderate Democrats, are becoming a rare, even endangered species in the big city.

    This is bad news for John McCain. He’s the kind of Republican who might have once been thought at least mildly saleable in urban areas. In many ways he suggests the pragmatism of past Republican Mayors such as New York’s Rudy Giuliani, Brent Schundler in Jersey City, Indianapolis’ Stephen Goldsmith and Richard Riordan in Los Angeles. However, in today’s urban political climate, defined by ultra-green and leftist cultural politics, the niche for even these kinds of Republicans seems to have all but evaporated.

    Perhaps the most intriguing, and least understood geography can found among the small towns and rural areas. Although they too have become more diverse, overall such communities tend to be poorer, less educated and more homogeneous (in most of the country white) than suburban areas. Yet there are now growing pockets of affluence in parts of this geography, aided by the boom in energy, food, manufacturing and, to some extent, technology related industries.

    In the recent past, the Republicans have owned this demographic. Senator Obama, after initial successes in Iowa and Wisconsin, generally did not do well in less prosperous rural/ small town areas in non-caucus states. In contrast, Hillary Clinton, who morphed into more of a populist late in the campaign, clearly touched a nerve in struggling small towns from Nevada to Pennsylvania. Any candidate who speaks about stimulating economic growth and opportunity could appeal to such areas.

    There is perhaps a greater opportunity for Senator Obama in those many parts of rural/small town America that are doing well. Although all rural and small town Americans may seem “bitter” — to use Obama’s unfortunate phrase — to the urban elites, considerable numbers of small towns are doing better than any time in decades. Plugged into the global economy, internet and their satellites, they are no longer the isolated, bigoted rubes of city imaginings. A forward-looking pro-growth agenda could be surprisingly successful in such places.

    Yet in the end, we believe the election will be decided largely in the suburbs, the largest if least self-defined of the geographies. Throughout the primaries, Senator Obama battled Ms. Clinton to a rough draw in the suburbs. He generally did best in the higher end, closer in suburban communities as well as those with large minority population, much as John Kerry did against George Bush in 2002. Now the question is whether he can expand that suburban base to the often less affluent, newer and somewhat more exurban counties.

    Senator McCain, from sprawling Phoenix, needs to rally the hard-pressed homeowners and commuters of the suburbs. Recent polls suggest he now holds as much as a ten point lead among suburban voters. To consolidate that advantage, and even expand it, he must offer a vision that promises a future under the next Republican President better than the present one. In contrast, given his lock on the cities, Obama simply needs to split the suburban geography and make a respectable showing in the rural/small towns’ constituency to reach the top of the greasy pole.

    Mark Schill contributed to this report, also appearing at Politico.com.

    Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive editor of NewGeography.com. Mark Schill, an associate at Praxis Strategy Group, is the site’s managing editor.

  • Is Narcissus also a success story?

    In sharp contrast with its arch-rival, Los Angeles, San Francisco historically has won plaudits from easterners. Writing in his 1946 landmark work, Inside USA, John Gunther compared “tranquil and mature” San Francisco with LA, a city he loathed as “the home par excellence of the dissatisfied.” The City by the Bay, he wrote, “possesses a incomparable quality of charm” unsurpassed by any American city.

    But no group extols San Francisco’s virtues more than San Franciscans. Indeed when journalist Neil Morgan wrote about the place he labeled it “Narcissus of the West.” Perhaps nothing exemplified this self-reflecting modality than the old tendency to refer to the place simply as “The City,” as if, in real terms, there was no other.

    Over the past few decades, this combination of urban charm and narcissism has transformed San Francisco. The city I got to know as a young journalist in the early 1970s working for the alternative weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian was already changing. Areas once habituated by old-fashioned bohemians (i.e., those without trust funds) – North Beach, Union Street – already were being displaced by new age enthusiasts, investment bankers and young corporate executives.

    But still, in the 1970s, San Francisco remained very much a city of neighborhoods, each one very much a world unto itself. If the east face of the city – North Beach, Russian Hill, Downtown, Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf – was being transformed into a kind of high-end theme park, much of the western ends of the city, as well as places such as the Mission and Potrero Hill, remained bastions of ethnic diversity, middle and working class families.

    As our articles editor Andy Sywak, who is also editor of the Castro Courier neighborhood newspaper, points out in his first rate analysis, this San Francisco still exists, although it may be holding on for its life. Demographically, San Francisco has changed in ways that may well signal the future for at least a series of American urban geographies – Portland, Seattle, Boston, DC and even Manhattan come to mind – that although quick to celebrate diversity are in many ways becoming increasingly less so.

    In some ways, this may be the curse of too-good looks. Ever since Haight-Ashbury caught on as the epicenter of the 1960s hippy movement, San Francisco has lured ever more affluent and well-educated people. In the process, the price of real estate has skyrocketed, making the city virtually unaffordable for almost everyone outside the upper middle class. Once known as a rough, brawling union town, San Francisco likely now boasts the highest percentage of people living off wealth – rents, dividends, interest – of any major American city.

    A recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that virtually every income group from households making $50,000 to $150,000 a year dropped between 2002 and 2006. In contrast, households making between $150,000 and $200,000 surged 52 percent and those earning even more expanded by 40 percent. Housing prices, although slightly off last, have more than doubled since 2002 to nearly $800,000; it takes an income near $200,000 to afford a median priced home.

    This upper class shift has fostered, indeed encouraged, a strange form of ultra-liberal politics. Perhaps no major American city wears its leftism on its sleeve more than San Francisco. When it comes to imposing “green” controls and standards, as well as any embracing gender and cultural liberalism, The City is not to be outdone.

    But such lifestyle liberalism should not be confused with traditional urban reform, which focused on how to expand the benefits of urban life and economy to broad sections of the population. To maintain and even expand this largely childless city – San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children per capita of any major American city – major reform of city institutions, notably schools, no longer commands priority. Instead, efforts can be concentrated in consolidating what University of Chicago urban theorist Saskia Sassen calls “the urban glamour zone.”

    In this sense, San Francisco is a place that combines the characteristics of an exclusive resort, with extremely expensive real estate and concentrations of high-end amenities, with an exclusive economy based on elite services fields such as finance, media and design. Even in hard times, its real estate economy can be propped up by purchases by the wealthy, both full and part-timers, who wish to imbibe The City’s urban charms.

    Increasingly – and likely more the case in the future – these wealthy people (and their progeny) will settle in San Francisco more for lifestyle than purely economic reasons. Instead of nurturing the traditional middle class, the city can depend on the kind of young temporary sojourners (remarked upon by our Adam Mayer, who recently moved back to the Bay Area) to provide relatively low-cost skilled labor as well as the legions of waiters, toenail painters, dog walkers, performance artists and the like.

    Such an urban economy, of course, also requires people willing to do very hard labor – busboys, janitors, cleaning ladies, gardeners – many of whom will have to commute from distant locales to service the “needs” of the cognitive elites. The one impoverished constituency tolerated in the new order, the homeless, will incongruously now share the glamour city with the glitterati. This is why, notes the great California historian and San Francisco native Kevin Starr, The City has become “a cross between Carmel and Calcutta.”

    Can such a society work, and, if so, is its model applicable elsewhere? Certainly you must be a place with inherent attractions to the wayward and affluent. Seattle, Portland, Boston as well as Manhattan could also evolve in this direction, and may already being doing so. It’s difficult, however, to see such an economy working out so well in other less powerfully attractive urban centers, particularly those with large concentrations of poverty.

    But for a lovely place like San Francisco the trajectory is not entirely negative. As the country’s population expands to 400 million in 2050, there will be a growing, albeit small niche, for high-cost places that appeal to those with requisite high-end skills or at least the right heredity.

    We can see this with the economy. Even as it has lost corporate headquarters, manufacturing and other generators of middle-class jobs, San Francisco’s appeal to high-end workers and as an entertainment center – Dr. Starr dubs his hometown “a theme park for restaurants” – has helped secure its position as kind of PR office, party town and alternative hip location for the far less charming, if more productive, nerdistan further south.

    San Francisco already has twice successfully hitched itself to the Valley’s surge, first in the late 90s dotcom surge and more recently in the Google-centric 2.0 boom. The city’s total jobs likely have not recovered their 2000 levels, but there has been a notable improvement over the last two years.

    The future progress, however, may prove more difficult. Although the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom has trumpeted what it claims as a major economic as well as demographic turnaround, the inevitable popping of the 2.0 bubble could wreak some damage. Already layoffs in the hard-hit financial sector – some of it tied to the venture capital industry – last quarter saw tenants give up almost a Transamerica Pyramid’s worth of space.

    The picture is at least murky on the demographic side. Yet although state population numbers record a return to population growth, the census numbers, which we rely on at NG, are less impressive, recording a loss of roughly four percent since 2000.

    These competing claims will not be fully resolved until after the 2010 census. But population growth may be somewhat beside the point. San Francisco’s emerging identity is not as a bustling, growing city that attracts middle class families. Instead, its destiny – or karma as locals may prefer to see it – may be to lure the wealthy, the well-educated and talented to the communal self-celebration that long has stood the trademark of the place they call The City.

  • Heartland Development Strategy

    From its inception as a nation, America’s great advantage over its global rivals has stemmed largely from the successful development of its vast interior. The Heartland has been both the incubator of national identity and an outlet for the entrepreneurial energies of both immigrants and those living in dense urban areas.

    The term “Heartland” is commonly used to describe the region west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains. This region constitutes the primary focus of this report, although we believe our policy prescriptions also apply to other parts of the country that are culturally similar to the Great Plains and the Midwest, including the inland valleys of the Pacific Northwest and California, as well as parts of central Florida and Pennsylvania.

    Historically, and with some exceptions — notably the South — the Heartland was dominated by capitalist principles and shaped by the forces of innovation, competition, and a continuous search for maximum economic return. The Heartland contributed significantly to America’s development as a global economic power. Over the past century, however, the role of the Heartland declined, as the United States evolved from a primarily agricultural to an industrial and finally an information-based economy. With the move toward manufactured goods and high-end services, the focus of economic development shifted from the agricultural interior toward the great metropolitan regions.

    Download “Rebuilding America’s Productive Economy: A Heartland Development Strategy” Report commissioned by the New America Foundation.

  • Whom Does the Economy Favor in the Midwest?

    There has been a basic demographic calculus to this prolonged Democratic nomination fight. In states and areas with high numbers of young, educated voters, as well as African-Americans, Sen. Barack Obama generally does well. In areas where the voters are older, less well-educated and either Hispanic or Anglo, the advantage goes to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    However, another, more overlooked factor lies in attitudes towards the economy. Relatively robust places – the farm towns and cities of the Great Plains, or the Connecticut suburbs – have been more susceptible to Obama’s broad reformer message than Clinton’s focused economic one. By contrast, in areas hardest hit by the recession, such as Ohio, Florida and Southern California, the New York senator has enjoyed a clear advantage.

    This pattern has only been interrupted when racial or ethnic factors have trumped economic concerns. Broadly speaking, for many reasons, Jews and Hispanics have tilted towards Ms. Clinton; African-Americans clearly have rallied overwhelmingly to Obama.

    In Indiana, African-Americans are a small (8.7 percent) minority, although far more important in the May 6 Democratic primary. Jewish and Latino voters, on the other hand, represent only tiny voting blocs. For this reason, demography and economics will play outsized roles.

    Despite the usual media spin about the dying Midwest, Indiana is hard to stereotype economically. Clearly, it is not an economic disaster area like Michigan or Ohio, although one would not call it booming either. Overall, Indiana is a mild underachiever; its 18.5 percent job growth rate since 1990 stands well below Wisconsin’s healthy 28.5 percent, but well above Ohio’s 11.1 percent, not to mention the phenomenal 32.8 percent growth in the other May 6 battleground, North Carolina.

    This economic growth has also impacted the state’s demography, particularly among 28- to 50-year-old educated workers. By this measurement Indiana, according to our Praxis Strategy Group analysis, does a bit better than Ohio but fared worse than either Wisconsin and far below the blow-out rates experienced by North Carolina.

    Overall, Indiana’s older, downscale demographics poses many problems for Obama. The state’s percentage of educated adults – traditionally his key white constituency – stands well below Wisconsin’s and even Ohio’s. In contrast, Clinton’s blue-collar appeal is well in evidence in Indiana even if, overall, the state’s economy has been doing far better than its Midwest neighbors.

    Ultimately, though, the Indiana story is really a story or regions. Well-educated Hoosiers tend to concentrate in fast growing areas around Indianapolis whose job growth more resembles a Sunbelt boomtown than a rustbelt disaster area. On the other end of spectrum, many are a series of smaller communities such as Muncie, Terre Haute, Gary and Ft. Wayne with very high concentrations of the generally older white working class residents.

    These areas were probably never fertile ground for Obama. In addition, it is likely the senator’s “bitter” comments about the religious and gun-toting characteristics of small town residents, not to mention the antics of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, have not made him seem any more acceptable.

    Ultimately, it is the weak economy that makes these places ideal for Clinton. Her policy prescriptions to save local industry – one might even call it pandering – works with people increasingly desperate about their place in the high-tech global economy. It is easy to see a summer gas tax holiday as a bad policy if you are a tenured professor at Indiana University, but saving a couple of bucks on the old Ford may sound very good to people on the economy’s hard edge.

    Core Clinton country takes you to Muncie. Since 2002, the city of 67,000 has lost almost a third of its manufacturing jobs. At the same time virtually every other sector – retail, business services, construction – are now also losing employment. The information sector has been negligible.

    Like many other smaller Indiana cities, Muncie, suggests Patrick Barkey, director of economic and political studies at Ball State University, has failed to find an answer to hard times .“A lot of our towns are not showing that they are viable in the information age,” Barkey observes.

    On the other end of the spectrum lies Indianapolis as well as Bloomington, the home of Indiana University, and Lafayette, where Purdue is located. Over the past decade, these places have been adding jobs well above the national average. In Indianapolis, manufacturing jobs may also be trending down, but other sectors like business services – up 20 percent since 2002 – have more than made up the slack. Information, education and health have also been on the upswing.

    Bloomington, Lafayette and Indianapolis are also home to large groups of well-educated, upwardly mobile voters – their percentage of educated adults reaches close to 30 percent, almost 50 percent higher than the state average. Until recently these voters could have been expected to provide a base for Sen. Obama, along with African Americans, which could outweigh an almost certain Hillary landslide in the downscale industrial cities of the state.

    However, other factors may be in play here. To be sure, college towns like Bloomington and Lafayette should be an easy roll for Obama but educated voters in heavily suburbanized Indianapolis may present a more difficult challenge. Most educated suburbanites lack the job security – not to mention the 60s style social politics – shared by college professors. This makes them more sensitive to movements in the economy. They still might be doing well, but potential instability threatens their jobs, businesses and mortgages far more directly than either students or workers in the protected non-profit sector.

    For these reasons, the suburban voters in Indianapolis, which altogether accounts for over one-fourth the state population, may provide the key to the election. In contrast to the inner city, which is almost 30 percent African-American, the surrounding suburbs are overwhelmingly white and well educated. They resemble less the traditional rural Hoosier than their suburban counterparts encountered two weeks ago outside Philadelphia.

    This should be a source of discomfit for the Obama strategists. White suburbs are precisely where Obama’s majority coalition, so impressive in the early primaries, now appears to be deconstructing. Bill Clinton, with his instinct for the jugular, likely knows this as well. When Sen. Clinton was fighting for her life in Pennsylvania, her husband, according to the Wall Street Journal, told her campaign “get me to the suburbs where I can make a difference”.

    It is impossible to calculate the “Bill” effect but in Pennsylvania, the suburbs, even the affluent ones, ended up tilting for Clinton. Since then, the Illinois senator has been weakened further by Rev. Jeremiah Wright while Sen. Clinton’s economic focus should be playing better even with relatively affluent voters as the extent of the downturn has become obvious.

    For these reasons Indiana, which once appeared to offer an excellent chance for Obama to land a final knock out blow on Sen. Clinton, might not turn out well for him at all. Until Obama can connect with increasingly anxious middle class white suburban voters, he may find his current core base of African-Americans, hardliner liberals and college students too small to win decisively. If so, it suggests the prospect not only to a considerable setback at the polls in Indiana Tuesday but also might undermine his chances in November, if he still manages to secure the nomination .