It’s no coincidence Donald Trump rolled out his child care proposal this week in suburban Philadelphia, with his daughter Ivanka by his side. To win Pennsylvania, the GOP nominee must remain competitive in the populous suburbs that ring the state’s largest city.

Recent polls suggest he’s not even close.


And unless Trump can boost his performance on the outskirts of cities like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit and Columbus, Ohio — particularly in the more affluent suburbs where middle-class women and college-educated white voters have eyed him askance — he risks being overwhelmed by the large Democratic margins delivered by the nearby big cities.

“He’s played the white, working-class speech,” said Terry Madonna, a veteran Pennsylvania pollster, referring to the message Trump has aimed at working class white men in economically struggling communities. “He’s not really made an appeal to [suburban] individuals.”

The suburbs, where 47 percent of all votes were cast in 2012, went narrowly for Romney after voting narrowly for Barack Obama in 2008. This time around, with Trump doing little to tailor his message beyond his base of disaffected white men, he’s lagging far behind Romney’s performance.

A Franklin and Marshall College poll in late August showed Hillary Clinton with a 45-31 advantage in the Philadelphia suburbs. An analysis from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed drastic underperformance by Trump in suburban Milwaukee’s Waukesha County, a conservative bastion where GOP candidates typically run up huge margins. While Trump led Clinton by 45 percent to 32 percent over the summer, he was far behind Romney’s pace there — the 2012 GOP nominee carried Waukesha by 67 percent to 32 percent.

The story is similar in Virginia, another swing state. According to an August Washington Post poll, Trump was running well behind Romney’s clip in the close-in D.C. suburbs and also in the Northern Virginia exurbs — places like Loudoun County, a critical battleground that Obama won by 5 points in 2012.

“I think it's more a matter of tone than it is his platform,” said Val DiGiorgio, chairman of the Republican Party of Chester County, the only one of Philadelphia’s four main suburban counties that Romney won in 2012. “We're a county where fiscal conservatives tend to do very well. If he could convince these folks that he's a fiscal conservative and acts more presidential, he could win over some of these voters. They dislike Hillary so intensely.”

GOP leaders and pollsters say Trump can’t win without making inroads in the suburbs — and voters there are turned off by his bluster and sometimes-erratic nature. But many also say Clinton’s unpopularity is keeping Trump in the hunt.

“There are some voters out there, they would prefer not to vote for Clinton, but they have yet to see Trump as a viable alternative,” added John Brabender, a GOP strategist who helped steer Rick Santorum to a Senate victory in Pennsylvania. “Trump can still take advantage of it. Trump needs to show a comfort level from a personality and temper standpoint.”

Trump’s temperament has been a persistent issue throughout the campaign — nowhere more than in the suburbs — but there are signs an image makeover is underway. Aside from his uneven attempts to moderate some positions, eschew some of his harsher rhetoric and hew more closely to a script with the use of a TelePrompter, the campaign has been dispatching his children and their spouses to the critical suburban counties that could decide his fate.

On Sept. 11, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara made an unannounced stop in Painesville, Ohio — in suburban Cleveland’s Lake County — for a 9/11 memorial event. She’s also been active in her native North Carolina, where she reportedly helped open a field office in the Charlotte suburbs. She’s also joining Trump’s other women surrogates to help soften his image in these key communities.

Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, stood alongside her father to unveil Trump’s new child care plan in Delaware County, a Democratic-leaning suburb of Philadelphia,. She’s also arranging a trip to Colorado next week — after a Saturday visit to the Denver suburbs by her father — for a series of events.

Last week, Donald Trump Jr. was also in Colorado too for events in downtown Denver — one with millennials, one with sportsmen — before heading north for a fundraiser in Windsor. The campaign is also in talks to send one of the Trump kids next month to Chester County, another crucial suburb outside Philadelphia, when the local GOP holds its fall reception.

Trump supporters view the candidate's children as highly effective surrogates who can smooth some of the mogul’s rougher edges and articulate (or talk around) some of Trump’s harsher policies and rhetoric, the central challenge Trump has faced to making inroads in the suburbs.

“The important thing is that you’re sending people that connect with people in the community,” said Robert Blaha, Trump’s Colorado campaign chairman. “Ivanka coming and talking to young millennial women -- like the role she played last night on the stage — the more you can connect with those groups, the more people can understand the candidate.”

The suburbs, of course, aren’t a monolithic voting bloc. While Trump’s struggles appear most acute in the affluent suburbs and among minorities in more mature suburbs, he’s actually well-positioned to make gains in some of the more industrial suburbs, which are prevalent in Ohio.

“A lot of suburbs have mini Rust Belts within them, and the same sort of angry, white working class voters have found Trump appealing,” said Larry Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University. “When you add it all up, the give and the take, Trump is almost certainly going to do worse than prior Republicans. A big tiebreaker is the number of new immigrants and other minorities, are the fastest growing population bloc in many suburbs.”

In Ohio, Levy noted, the Cleveland suburbs are riper targets for Trump because of their industrial tilt, while the Columbus suburbs are full of those more affluent white voters that haven’t warmed to Trump.

Suburban Republican leaders say that even in places where Trump may be lagging behind Romney’s performance, they see some recent evidence his fortunes may be improving.

“Our polling indicates he's down among the more affluent, suburban part of the county,” DiGiorgio, the Chester County chairman, said. “I'd say he's rebounded since then. He's probably still losing Chester County.”

Dale Fellows, chairman of the Cleveland-area Lake County GOP, said he’s seen an uptick in support for Trump among women. He noted the recent visit by Lara Trump, who was accompanied by Trump surrogates Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, the YouTube personalities who go by the names Diamond and Silk. “Republican women are starting to become more engaged,” he said. “That’s, I think, going to make a big difference in the outcome of the election.”

In Virginia’s Loudoun County, outside of Washington D.C., Trump is still working to put his base together.

“I’ll be honest, that’s something that’s still happening,” said Will Estrada, chairman of the county GOP. But he points to what he views as some optimistic signs — from a mad rush to claim Trump lawn signs to a decision by longtime Trump hater and prominent conservative radio host Mark Levin, a resident of the county in Leesburg, to relent and announce his support for Trump.

“Every day that gets closer to Election Day, we’re seeing the base come on board with Donald Trump,” he said.