Trump’s Suburban Slump: Fundraising Woes Signal TroubleTrump’s Suburban Slump: Fundraising Woes Signal Trouble Despite holding a slight lead in polls in North Carolina, Donald Trump’s fundraising efforts have taken a hit in suburban areas nationwide. Experts argue that this decline could translate into a significant disadvantage in key battleground states like Wisconsin and Arizona. In North Carolina, Trump’s fundraising has dropped significantly in suburban areas of Raleigh, Charlotte, and Greensboro. Republican consultant Jonathan Felts dismisses the decline as irrelevant to suburban voter enthusiasm, citing economic and security concerns as more salient issues. However, Biden campaign officials remain optimistic about their chances in the state, pointing to frequent visits by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as evidence of their commitment to competition. In Wisconsin, Trump’s fundraising has plummeted in suburban areas outside Milwaukee and Madison. Brookfield, Waukesha, and Middleton have all seen significant declines compared to 2016. This shift has helped Biden gain ground in these traditionally Republican areas, where demographic changes are favoring Democrats. In Arizona, where Trump won by a narrow margin in 2020, his fundraising success in the Phoenix suburbs has been mixed. While he has gained support in some areas, he has lost funding in others, mirroring the state’s changing political landscape. Political scientist Samara Klar highlights the abortion debate as a potential liability for Trump, as polls show majority opposition to restrictions. She believes this issue could alienate suburban moderates in particular. Overall, the fundraising data suggests that Trump’s support among suburban voters is waning. This trend, coupled with demographic shifts, has made key battleground state suburbs a major concern for the Trump campaign. As the election approaches, it remains to be seen whether Trump can overcome these fundraising hurdles and regain suburban support.
Trump has held a small but steady lead over Biden in most polls in North Carolina for months. Trump led Biden 48 to 43% among registered voters in a recent East Carolina University poll. The survey was conducted from May 31 to June 3, in the days after Trump became the first former US president to be convicted of felony crimes in the New York case.
Some Republicans argued that Trump’s drop in fundraising didn’t signify a lack of enthusiasm among suburban voters for the former president or a sign that abortion and other issues have pushed them farther away from the GOP.
“The idea that suburban voters are voting more Democratic, based on social issues, that’s overblown,” Jonathan Felts, a veteran North Carolina Republican consultant, told Newsweek.
“These voters are voting very much on economic issues and in a presidential year, security issues, whether that’s law and order, border security or America’s place in the world,” said Felts, who served as White House political director under former President George W. Bush.
But several Biden campaign officials said the state is winnable. They pointed to the President and Vice President Kamala Harris’ frequent trips to North Carolina as evidence the campaign is serious about competing there in November.
“Across battleground states, suburban, independent, and moderate voters do not want to donate to or vote for Donald Trump, a failed President and a convicted felon,” James Singer, a Biden campaign spokesperson, told Newsweek. “This November, these key suburban voters will re-elect Joe Biden, a president focused on what matters to them: lowering prices, economic opportunity, and safer communities,” Singer said.
The Biden campaign and state Democrats are focused on driving up suburban turnout in other battleground states such as Wisconsin, and fundraising totals there show they could capitalize on a lack of enthusiasm for Trump among moderate voters.
The Trump campaign’s fundraising has dropped sharply in suburbs outside of all of Wisconsin’s major cities.
Contributions to the Trump campaign in Brookfield, a suburb west of Milwaukee, are down 67% so far this cycle compared to 2016. Trump’s fundraising totals are down 24% in Waukesha, another Milwaukee suburb, 42% in De Pere, a suburb of Green Bay, and 33% in Middleton, a suburb of Madison, among others.
Overall, Biden outraised Trump $1 million to $963,000 this election cycle, according to the latest quarterly federal campaign finance data.
Support for Biden in suburban counties around Milwaukee and Madison—longtime Republican areas where demographics have started to favor Democrats—helped him beat Trump in 2020 by 20,000 votes in Wisconsin.
“The quintessential suburbs in Wisconsin are the ‘WOW’ counties, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington, and since 2012, those three suburban counties together have shifted 40,000 net votes away from Republicans for president,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll.
The new residents reshaping the suburbs outside Milwaukee tend to be “higher income, and a higher percentage of them are college graduates and postgraduates,” Franklin added. The new fundraising data shows that “the disaffection with Donald Trump in suburban Republican circles is clear.”
Mixed signs in Arizona suburbs
Arizona is the battleground state where Trump may stand the best chance to turn the tide in the suburbs — though even there, fundraising totals show his support from 2016 has wavered.
In 2020, Biden joined Bill Clinton as the only Democratic presidential candidate to win Arizona since 1948. But Biden’s victory came by just 10,457 votes—or 0.3% of the ballots cast—and voter frustration in Arizona over immigration, the economy, and crime has made it a prime target for the Trump campaign.
Overall, Trump received $2.7 million in contributions in Arizona, far outpacing the Biden campaign’s $1.6 million haul through the first quarter of 2024. The Trump campaign has had more success with suburban donors in the state than most other battlegrounds, especially in the Phoenix area.
Compared to 2016, donations to Trump are up 15% so far this election in Chandler, 28% in Peoria, and 86% in Gilbert—all fast-growing suburbs near Phoenix that have attracted increasing numbers of new residents from California and other states in recent years.
Contributions to Trump have also gone up in some cities, like Tucson, as well as in rural parts of the state that remain deeply conservative.
Still, the Stacker and Newsweek analysis of FEC data shows that Trump’s fundraising has declined in other Phoenix suburbs, such as Paradise Valley and Sun City, the Oro Valley suburb of Tucson, and other suburban areas around Scottsdale and Flagstaff.
The dropoff mirrors demographic shifts in the state that increasingly favor Democrats, said Samara Klar, a political scientist at the University of Arizona.
The debate over abortion in Arizona highlights the recent political shifts in the state that could hurt Trump in the fall, Klar told Newsweek. The Republican-controlled Arizona state legislature voted to keep a 15-week ban on abortion in place earlier this year in response to an outcry over a state supreme court decision to revive an 1864 law with a near-total abortion ban. But the 15-week ban could be challenged by a ballot initiative this fall that would enshrine abortion access in the state constitution.
Trump’s support for abortion restrictions may be a liability in a state where polls show a majority of adults oppose placing broad limits on abortion services. His position on abortion could further alienate suburban moderates in particular, Klar said.
“Having abortion on the ballot is going to be really helpful for Biden,” Klar said, especially in the booming suburbs of Phoenix, where voters are closing their checkbooks to Trump.
“The Phoenix suburbs are growing like crazy,” Klar said. “That’s where Republicans are losing ground, and that’s the area of Arizona they need to be worried about.”
That worry now extends to raising money in Arizona and other battleground state suburbs, said Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll.
“Democrats are not as invisible in suburban counties now as they were” in the past, Franklin said. Under Trump, the GOP has transformed into a “new populist party that’s looking more to appeal to blue-collar, non-college voters. That’s quite a contrast to the country club Republicans of the old days.”
Additional reporting by Elena Cox, senior data reporter at Stacker; additional data analysis by Emma Rubin, data editor at Stacker.
