A friend of mine is fond of saying that his vote, nationally, doesn’t matter because he lives here in California and no matter what he thinks, wants, or votes California is going to be in the Democratic column come election night.
Today that is true, but it hasn’t always been that way.
From 1952 through 1988 California was a reliable Republican state, only once 1964 ending up in the Democratic totals during the Goldwater Disaster. However from 1988 through the current day, five straight elections, California has gone Democratic and teh Republicab’s haven’t had a ghost of chance at the electoral college votes locked up in the Golden State. Why?
Did California turn that Liberal in 1992?
Did the Republicans move that far right in 1992?
Was it a combination of both?
Obviously Texas is not California.
I suspect that the demography of Texas has not changed as much California. Texas has always been a conservative state. The reason Texas flipped from Democrat to Republican is because there is no longer a conservative wing inside the Democratic Party. Heck in many cases the very same people are holding office in Texas, the difference being those office holders flipped from Democratic to Republican!
I suspect a number of factors.
1) Legal immigration is high in California. (DO NOT COUNT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IN THIS. Illegal immigrants can’t vote.) This contribute to a higher rate of your state’s citizens being naturalized citizens. For some reason, the new citizens that I have observed in Florida (granting that this may not be the case in California, but it is the data I have observed) tend to register and vote as Democrats. Increase in number of Democrats voting = theoretical increase in Democratic candidates winning the state (theoretical because once you are in the booth, no one makes you vote the party line.)
2) I also think there has been a shift in the Republican Party in the time period mentioned. The Republican Party under Reagan gave the social conservatives nothing but rhetoric. To the best of my limited knowledge, he did not pass one item of legistlation that limited abortion or allowed people to send their students to private schools on public monies. He did not put teacher-lead prayer back in school. He did not pass much of anything about marriage, gay, straight, or otherwise. He gave them rhetoric. Now, truthfully, you can’t just talk about something for forever. Eventually people are going to want some action, thus the change in the Republican Party – the party of small government except for the military and the bedroom police (tongue in cheek, people, don’t have a cow).
3) I think also that there has been a demographic shift as well, but for economic reasons, rather than pure phillosophical ones. Prior to 1988 and the existance of Silicon Valley, California had a larger percentage of its population engaged in agriculture. Agricultural communities tend to be conservative and this provided a nice counter-balance to San Francisco and Hollywood (Land of Liberals, flaming and other wise). With the tech boom, a large, young, tech-savvy, mostly liberal-libertarian crowd moved into California, shifting the balance.
I think it is fair to say that this is unlikely to be a permanant shift. (And, as we know well in my part of Florida, you never know when every last vote will count so VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!!!)
I’m not sure the demographic argument is that compelling. 1952-1976 the Democratic Party carried Texas 4 times, even voting for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and voted for the Republican Party 3 times in that same period. However from 1980 to present Texas has been a reliable Republican state and I don;t think that’s due to Demographic shifting.
Mistake. I should have said the book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority.”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Emerging-Democratic-Majority-ebook/dp/B0036QVPEU/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1/190-2467732-2470753?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2
Several factors are at work here. Limiting the analysis to just presidential voting, I think the primary factor is demographic. California is probably a case where the book, “The Coming Democratic Majority” was accurate.
The demography of California in 1952 compared to 1992 is quite different. I haven’t seen the numbers myself, but I bet if you broke down the total vote into various subgroups: age, race, income, education, gender, etc. ; that you would find the vote percentage has not changed much between the Republicans and Democrats.
Water? That’s a silly theory. How to account for Texas and Alaska then?
Honestly? Proximity to large bodies of water is the single greatest predictor of Party affiliation (Ie, the coasts are ‘liberal’ the interior is ‘conservative.’) Moreover, I think that when you’re looking at party affiliation more than 20-30 years ago it gets confusing. Even though republicans have been the party of ‘Small Government except for Military’ for a while, the coalitions and ancillary issues have shifted extensively.
-John