Levittown Larry
| 🏠 | |
| Era | The Sixties |
|---|---|
| Age | 30-40 |
| Home | Bucks County, PA |
| Demographic | suburban, white, WWII veteran |
| Lean | Swing voter |
| Race | white |
A Second World War veteran and insurance middle manager living in Levittown, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His vote helps decide the decade's landslide elections, and both parties consider him representative of the political centre.
Who they stand for
The postwar suburbs were the fastest-growing part of the electorate. They were built with the help of the GI Bill, FHA-guaranteed mortgages and the new interstate highways, and by the 1970 census more Americans lived in suburbs than in central cities. Its voters had voted Republican for Eisenhower out of habit, but many still thought of themselves as Democrats. Bucks County voted narrowly for Kennedy in 1960, voted for Johnson by a landslide in 1964 when Goldwater frightened suburban voters, and voted for Nixon in 1968 when urban unrest was widespread. The Levittown in Pennsylvania has its own history with race. The Myers family, its first Black residents, were mobbed for weeks in 1957, and the township's acceptance of civil rights stopped at its own property lines.
He wants to keep what he already has. This means a stable mortgage, a school worth its taxes, order in the streets, and no war that reaches his own children. GI Bill Bobby is his younger self, living in Ohio. Suburban Betty shares his household. He votes based on the tax bill, while she votes based on their children.
Playing to them
He responds well to steadiness. He supports a president who resembles Eisenhower in manner, balances the budget when possible, keeps the peace without appearing weak, and handles a crisis competently. He accepts a civil rights bill aimed at the South and supports the Great Society's education funding, but he grows less supportive as more programmes are added.
He does not forgive rising crime, a tax increase with nothing to show for it, disorder shown on the news night after night, or a fair-housing order that reaches his own township. He is not lost through any single action but through the accumulation of many, and he is won back the same way. Winning his support costs little from the centre of the electorate. Goldwater Barry Jr and Prairie Ruth see his programmes as more of the same big government, and Campus David sees his law-and-order measures as repression, but neither reaction costs much support elsewhere. Suburban Betty and GI Bill Bobby tend to vote the same way he does, which makes him among the cheapest voters in the cast to keep and among the most costly to lose.
Where they live
The five states where Levittown Larry makes up the largest share of the electorate in the sixties:
- Vermont
- Utah
- Maine
- New Hampshire
- North Dakota