Suburban Sue
| 👩🦱 | |
| Era | The Fifties |
|---|---|
| Age | 34-40 |
| Home | suburban Detroit |
| Demographic | suburban swing, white, mother |
| Lean | Swing voter |
| Race | white |
Sue is a mother in her late thirties in the Detroit suburbs whose husband earns a union-scale wage. She has voted for both parties and belongs to neither, and she is the moderate voter that a whole campaign is built to reach.
Who they stand for
The 1950 Treaty of Detroit, an agreement between the United Auto Workers and General Motors, gave auto workers pensions, health cover and a cost-of-living pay increase. With credit from the Federal Housing Administration, these workers moved their families out of the city to suburbs such as Dearborn, Royal Oak, Warren and Livonia. The wives of these workers were the voters most likely to split their ticket between the parties. Michigan voted for Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and at the same time elected the Democrat G. Mennen Williams governor six times, because the same household could want Eisenhower's calm leadership in Washington and Williams's spending on schools and roads at home. These families cared about school overcrowding from the baby boom, the polio epidemics before the Salk vaccine arrived in 1955, the fear of juvenile delinquency raised by the 1955 Kefauver Senate hearings, and the price of groceries. The 1957-58 recession gave Detroit one of the nation's worst unemployment rates and turned these suburbs Democratic in the 1958 midterm elections. Park Forest Peggy is the same kind of voter fifteen years younger, not yet settled enough in her marriage to split her ticket.
Playing to them
Sue rewards a president who governs from the middle of politics. She wants good schools, quiet streets, a pay cheque that keeps pace with prices, and no American soldiers sent into a new war. The manner in which a president governs matters to her as much as the policy itself, and a president who shouts at Congress loses her support. She will not forgive inflation, a return of high unemployment to Detroit, a foreign crisis handled with bluster, or a president who turns governing into a moral crusade. A president who makes hunting Communists his defining cause loses Sue's support while keeping the support of Minute Women Vivian and War Widow Bridget. A president who fights the unions to a standstill also loses her support, along with the support of Steel City Stan, because the union pay cheque in her household pays the mortgage. The moderate consensus that wins her support comes at a cost on the edges of politics. It costs the support of Texas Oil Tex on taxes, Faculty Eleanor on civil liberties, and South Side Marcus on civil rights, issues that Sue would rather see settled slowly and somewhere else.
Where they live
The five states where Suburban Sue makes up the largest share of the electorate in the fifties:
- Utah
- Idaho
- Vermont
- North Dakota
- Wyoming