Trump's massive unpopularity with educated white women is killing him
Daniel Dale?@ddale8 10h10 hours agoDonald Trump's massive unpopularity with educated white women is killing him in critical suburbs. My story:
Educated women pose big problem for Donald Trump in key suburbs
Philadelphia’s suburbs have far more voters than blue-collar communities, and women there appear to loathe the Republican nominee.
Trump is badly lagging every previous Republican nominee with educated white women. Among white women with a college degree, Romney earned 52 per cent to Obama’s 46 per cent in 2012. Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first female nominee of a major party, is trouncing Trump 58 per cent to 38 per cent, ABC/Washington Post polling suggests.
No Republican has won Pennsylvania since 1988. Trump, behind in more diverse states, needs it desperately. He is trailing by seven percentage points. The four “collar counties” around Philadelphia — Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware — are a large part of the reason why.
“They’re hugely important. You had 1.2 of 5.5 million votes cast in 2012 cast in four counties,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. “It’s virtually impossible for either party to carry the state if they don’t do well there. In fact, you usually have to win.”
The counties have been trending toward the Democrats for 25 years. Republican voters there, Madonna said, tend to mix fiscal conservatism with liberal positions on issues like gun control, abortion rights and climate change. Trump has staked out right-wing stances on all three.
Blue Bell went narrowly for Obama in the last election. An unscientific sample on Monday was notably lopsided: of 37 women, 22 preferred Clinton versus only eight who said they would vote for Trump or were likely to do so...
read more: https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/09/04/educated-women-pose-big-problem-for-donald-trump-in-key-suburbs.html
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Of those 4 counties, the most "blue collar" would be Bucks County and you see that reflected in the number of GOP voters there (plus adjoining NE Philly) and the flip back/forth of what is the 8th Congressional District. The rest are not so much as many of the "blue collar" Philadelphians actually moved to New Jersey (but may still work in Philly, where Christie's recent torpedoing of the agreement between NY & PA for income taxes when residing in one state and working in another, is going to hurt some folks pretty bad). I.e., despite having a Democratic legislature, a number of the GOP state reps in NJ are in counties just across from Philly.
You also have many middle class POC who have moved to these other rim counties, initially pushing many of the older whites further west to "exburbia" (which would include places like Chester County perhaps 20 years ago... but that has since been built up with development after development and is not as "farm land" as it used to be). Now the children of the exburbanites are migrating directly back into the city, so you have a reversal of the old "white flight" going on and that is impacting the demographics.
The 2010 census redistricting in PA helped to scuttle the Democratic elective trend in some of these western Philly rim counties, ensuring that they would not only NOT be representative of the actually populace when it came to state and federal seats, but also mask the political reality there when it comes to statewide at-large elections - for example twisting the 7th Congressional District across 5 counties to flip the district from blue to red -
This is why the media keeps getting fooled by PA and the major impact that its most populous area - SE PA - has when it comes to statewide elections. As of this past April, there were almost 1,000,000 (pdf) MORE registered Democrats than Republicans in the state, and this is not counting any updates since this data was compiled, where major voter registration is going on right now. This is also despite the barely mentioned correction to the party switching that went on just before the April primary.
...thank you. 
I have many friends and family living in the 'burbs and have watched the township transformations first hand! And this includes knowing some very frustrated Republicans (some of whom voted for Obama twice) who have switched to indie.
At one time in these communities, in order to even move there, they were essentially "forced" to register Republican or the volunteer fire company would be "slow to respond" if they called or they would receive a sudden uptick in citations for minor things associated with their property, and other such nuisances. Back in those days, many of them (former Democrats) pretty much stopped voting, so the GOP prevailed. Nowadays, although this type of thing probably still goes on in some further-out places, the changes have been significant - which is why the gerrymandering happened here in 2010, done by the GOP, in order to solidify their power in the face of actually being in the minority in terms of party registration in this state.
This is why this state confounds folks...
which were redrawn several times due to court cases, but I don't think they had any grounds for suing for the congressional lines (notably since PA lost some seats between 2000 and 2010).
The WaPo had a blog article on this. There is a group here in PA called "Fair Districts PA", that is trying to push for reform.
As a note, before the redistricting, that was Joe Sestak's district and it had previously been GOP but suddenly started reflecting the influx of Democrats... So they had to carve all around 5 counties to find GOP strongholds. Meanwhile, you see the other piece of that puzzle (the 6th Congressional) going through 4 counties -
And another piece (13th Congressional), which cuts through parts of Philadelphia (county) and Montgomery County (this used to be a light red district with only a tiny piece of it reaching into Philly 25 years ago and is now blue with probably 1/3rd of Philly made part of it) -
According to him, women LOVE him! He's the most masculine, handsomest, virile, sexiest man to ever have run for office! 
