PHOENIX — America’s suburbs are undergoing a political transformation.
Democrats who once were confined to dense cities have made inroads into the suburbs that were once dependably Republican.
President Donald Trump faces pressure to win back these areas as he seeks reelection, while Democratic challenger Joe Biden hopes the increasingly diverse suburbs will deliver him the presidency.
The AP analyzed the changes in the vote from 2016 to 2018 to demonstrate the shifting battleground. In Phoenix, the average flip zone occurred on average at 670 households per square mile in 2018.
It reached into the shopping plazas and office parks and cul-de-sacs where homes had backyards large enough for swimming pools.
The flip zone was nearly 1,000 households per square mile in 2016. If measured as a distance from city hall, the flip zone pushed out more than two miles in the span of two years, right to the northern edge of Interstate 101 in Phoenix.
Arizona elected a Democrat to the Senate held by Republican for 24 years.
For a photo essay, photographer Dario Lopez-Mills roamed the neighborhoods around Phoenix where the political makeup is changing the most. Amid the pandemic, he found few people but plenty of signs of explosive growth: desert scrub cleared away for new home construction, the skeletal frames of apartment buildings, and restaurants and businesses catering to an increasingly diverse population.
Dresses are displayed at a Quinceanera store inside the Metrocenter mall.
New residential construction rises next to a basketball court at a middle-class neighborhood in Phoenix on March 9.
A U.S. flag flies over a home in a middle-class neighborhood of Phoenix on March 9. Before the pandemic crashed the economy, one of the challenges for Republicans was the strong economy brought more educated Democrats into the Phoenix suburbs. This diluted the GOP’s potency as moderate Democrats became appealing to voters who couldn’t find a home in Trump’s party.
(AP/Dario Lopez-MIlls)
A mural is displayed at a fast-food Mexican restaurant near the Deer Valley suburb in Phoenix on March 9. Suburbs across the country have grown more diverse, crowded and politically competitive. These trends are eating away at decades of Republican control as more than half of the electorate calls the suburbs home.
A sign advertising new homes stands next to an empty lot near the Deer Valley suburb in Phoenix on March 10. America’s suburbs are poised to decide not just who wins the White House this year — but the contours of the debate over guns, immigration, work, schools, housing and health care for years to come.
A U.S. flag hangs inside the now-defunct Metrocenter mall in Phoenix on March 14. In the 1980s as the Phoenix area expanded, the mall’s decline began as many of the immediate residential neighborhoods bordering Metrocenter as middle-class residents moved away.
A giant inflatable elf stands next to cellphone towers disguised as palm trees in front of the Padre Murphy’s Sports Grill at a strip mall near the intersection between Arizona Route 101 and Interstate 17 in Phoenix on March 9.
A man dozes off while waiting for customers at a jewelry store inside the Metrocenter mall on March 14.