Overwhelming support for gun restrictions in the suburbs is good news for Democrats, but real gun reform is unlikely with a GOP Senate
- House Democrats are making big electoral gains in suburban areas, where voters overwhelmingly support greater restrictions on guns.
- Recent polling from Politico and Morning Consult show significant support for stricter gun laws among Republican women, too — a huge warning sign for the GOP.
- In Texas, which is shaping up to be a key battleground in the fight for suburban voters, four Republicans have already called it quits, deciding to retire rather than run for re-election.
- But even if the issue of guns helps Democrats running in suburban districts, gun control legislation is unlikely to pass through Congress with a Republican-controlled Senate.
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House Democrats making big electoral gains in suburban areas could help make gun reform a winning political issue, but any gun control legislation is unlikely to pass through Congress with a Republican Senate.
Democratic members of Congress are undertaking a re-invigorated push for gun reform legislation, including universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. This comes in the wake of two deadly mass shootings that killed 31 people and injured dozens of others in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio over the past week.
In 2018, Democratic challengers flipped 40 seats in the House of Representatives largely by winning over college-educated suburban voters, according to data compiled by CityLab, which found that 22 of the 40 flipped districts were located in dense suburban or sparse-suburban districts.
The Democratic wave is rapidly transforming places like the formally Republican stronghold of Orange County in Southern California, where Democrats pulled off the once-thinkable goal of winning back four GOP-controlled seats in 2018.
And in August of 2019, the Orange County Democratic Party announced that registered Democrats now outnumber registered Republicans in the area, a striking development in an area that has been dubbed "Reagan country" for decades.
The Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman noted that when Democrats held the House majority in 2007, they held 233 seats that represented 32% of America's total land area. They currently hold almost the same number of seats, but they cover just 20% of the US' total landmass.
Gun restrictions are popular among the suburban voters who are rapidly fleeing the GOP
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association, is privately lobbying Trump to not support a bipartisan background checks bill, warning him that his supporters would disapprove of the bill. However, close to 90% of Republicans and Trump voters routinely support universal background checks in public opinion surveys.
There's a mounting amount of evidence that gun control will be a top priority for voters in GOP-represented suburban districts in areas of Arizona and Texas, which Democrats hope to flip blue.
As Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur recently reported, exit polling from the 2018 midterms shows that gun reform was among the top five electoral priorities for all voters, and those who supported gun control measures backed Democrats 76% to 22%.
And even more recent national polling from Politico and Morning Consult conducted from August 5-7 after the El Paso and Dayton shootings shows majority support for stricter gun laws among suburban voters and especially among GOP women — a huge warning sign for Republicans:
- 75% of suburban voters supported stricter gun laws, as do 55% of those who voted for a Republican in 2018 and 59% of Republican women.
- 91% of suburban voters and 93% of Republican women supported background checks on all gun sales.
- 71% of suburban voters and 64% of Republican women supported banning assault-style weapons.
- 75% of suburban voters and 69% of Republican women supported banning high-capacity magazines.
- 83% of suburban voters and 81% of Republican women supported a mandatory three-day waiting period for purchasing a gun.
- And 82% of suburbanites and 84% of GOP women supported raising the minimum age to buy a gun to 21.
Election analyst Amy Walter, also of the Cook Political Report, wrote that "the collapse of GOP in suburbs has been remarkable," adding that for many suburban voters, "the 'good economy' isn't enough to overcome the dislike these voters have for Trump's rhetoric & behavior. And, the shootings in Dayton/El Paso only help make [the Democrats'] case that the country can't afford 4 more years of this kind of divisiveness."
Republicans too are sounding the alarm about Democrats' surge in the suburbs — especially after nine Republican House representatives all decided to call it quits and decline to run for re-election.
In the past two weeks alone, four members of Texas' Republican congressional delegation announced they do not plan to run for re-election in 2020, almost a year after Democrats came within striking distance of beating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, and after they flipped two suburban districts in Houston and Dallas in 2018.
Three of the Texas representatives, Reps. Kenny Marchant, Pete Olson, and Will Hurd, represent majority-nonwhite and/or suburban districts that have been trending Democratic over the past several years, giving Democrats renewed hope of flipping those seats, and putting Republicans on notice.
"Dear Republicans: if you lose the suburbs, you lose the 2nd amendment, the life issue, the religious liberty issue, the White House," wrote conservative commentator Erick Erickson. "And guess what? There's a lot of data showing that's happening. You need blue-collar voters. You need suburban voters too."
Matt Mackowiak, the chairman of the Travis County GOP which covers the city of Austin, begged his fellow Republicans to not to retire, tweeting on August 3, "I don't know who needs to hear this. But enough goddamn GOP congressional retirements. Every retirement threatens GOP's chance to take back the majority," imploring members of Congress to "suck it up. Win your re-elect. Fight socialism. Don't quit."
Impactful gun control legislation is unlikely to pass through a GOP Senate
While gun reform might give Democrats an edge among suburban members of Congress, any gun control legislation has close to a zero percent chance of passing as long as the GOP holds the Senate, which they currently control by a margin of 53 to 47 seats after expanding their lead in 2018.
In February, the House of Representatives passed two bills which aim to strengthen background checks — one which would close the so-called "gun show loophole" by requiring background checks on all private gun sales, and another which would extend the required amount of time to process a background check.
While some Republican members of Congress like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rep. Adam Kirzinger of Illinois have spoken out in support of some gun restrictions after the two shootings, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not brought either of the House-approved background check bills to the floor of the Senate.
GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia are lobbying the president to support their own bipartisan background checks bill, but as of now, it isn't guaranteed to have the votes required to have a good chance of passing.
With McConnell cultivating a "legislative graveyard" in the chamber and having said he won't bring legislation that doesn't have broad support to the floor, Democrats' best chances of passing ambitious gun reform legislation are to win back both the presidency and the US Senate.
While it's too early to definitively rule anything out, flipping back control of the Senate would be a heavy lift for Democrats.
It would most likely require Democratic Sen. Doug Jones being re-elected in Alabama, but also winning the seats currently held by Republican Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and an additional seat in either North Carolina, Iowa or Texas.
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