It took mere minutes after California polls closed on election night for networks to call the state for Joe Biden. Millions of votes in America’s most populous state were still to be counted, but Biden’s wide victory in California was guaranteed – the state is, after all, seen as a liberal bastion.
But zoom in on its sprawling 58 counties, and the solid-blue picture of California is blurred. Even with a rousing race for the White House luring new voters to the ballot box this year, congressional conservatives held on to their seats and Republicans are poised to pick up more in close races they lost in the last cycle. Californians sided with corporations on the future of gig work, decided against affirmative action, and nixed both stronger rent control and a new business tax that benefits schools and local governments.
“California is the most misunderstood state in the country,” said the political scientist Bruce Cain, who teaches on the American west at Stanford University. “It has always been that way.”
California continues to produce some of the most influential and oppositional politicians on both sides. The Golden state is home to some of the most prominent conservative voices, including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and the Trump-allied congressman Devin Nunes. It is also home to the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the House intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff – all of whom secured new terms this election.
It still has large swaths of red territory hidden behind a Democratic super-majority in the state house. Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris, who hails from the Bay Area, is the only California Democrat who has made it to the White House. Before the 1990s, a largely Republican-held California sent Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to the national stage.
That’s why, Cain said, it shouldn’t be surprising to see some hard-fought congressional seats slipping from Democrats this year. “These were in many instances Republican seats that were held for a decade or two, sometimes longer,” he said. “It didn’t take much to tip it away – those seats were really on loan.”
The sharp ideological divide, embodied by the big battle at the top of the ticket, also encouraged Californians across the political spectrum to weigh in. They said they saw this election as the most consequential of their lifetime and, according to surveys done by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), roughly three-quarters of respondents said they were more enthusiastic about voting than ever before. They were not just Democrats.
“The enthusiasm about voting was similar among Democrats and Republicans,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s President. “We are a blue state, but it meant that Republicans were going to turn out in California even if the presidential election was a foregone conclusion.” The election brought roughly 22 million people to the polls, according to statistics from the California secretary of state – the most in the state’s history – and roughly 88% of eligible residents were registered.
“In what everybody was expecting was going to be a blue wave election, it looks like a few of the seats will turn Republican again,” Baldassare said, adding that focus on the presidential election and representatives also could have clouded concentration and understanding of California’s complicated 12 state propositions.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
