Political news out of California has been challenging for Republicans now for more than a decade. What was once the state of Ronald Reagan is now the state of Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and Gavin Newsom. However, in the last week, there have been several important stories that suggest that things could be looking up for Republicans.
Let’s start with the fact that there is a special election in California’s 25th congressional district to replace the disgraced congresswoman Katie Hill who resigned earlier this year after multiple scandals. CA-25 used to be held by Republicans but has moved steadily to the left. Today, the district is solidly Democratic with Democrats outnumbering Republicans by 39-32%. Running to replace Hill are California Assemblywoman Christy Smith (D) and former Navy pilot Mike Garcia (R). Due to coronavirus, Governor Newsom decided to use mail-in ballots that were sent to all registered voters. The election is on May 12th, but so far the all paper ballot idea does not appear to be working for Democrats. 108,000 ballots had been received as of Thursday and the party affiliation of the returned ballots was 45% Republican, 35% Democratic. The California DNC has panicked and got the government to announce that they would have in-person voting after all in a desperate attempt to tilt the election in favor of the Democrats. At this point, it looks like a highly competitive race but absent a surge in the newly sanctioned in-person polling stations, it’s likely that Garcia is headed for an upset win.
The remarkable difference in returned ballots between Republicans and Democrats caused us to look more closely at the final results of the California Presidential primary held earlier this year. The first thing we noted that was Biden only won 27.9% of the vote, which suggests that most of the Democratic primary voters are really not that excited about the frontrunner. Secondly, California moved up its primary to early March from June to make its primary matter more. The expectation was that participation on the Democratic side would go way up, but in reality it only went up by 13% from 5.1 million to 5.8 million. This suggests a real lack of excitement among Democrats. It’s particularly noteworthy when you compare to the Republican primary. Republican participation was up 12% from 2016, but in 2020 Trump was running only against token opposition, yet his voters still turned out backing him with 92% of the primary, up from 75% in 2016.
There is still a ways to go, but right now the data out of California suggests that Republicans are much more engaged than their Democratic citizens and turning out to the polls in much higher levels. If this continues to November, 2020 could bring a Republican wave election year.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 