What happened to the Republican Party in California

By M.D. & THE DATA TEAM

IT IS HARD to believe, as the Republican candidates gather in suburban Los Angeles for their second televised debate, that California used reliably to vote Republican in presidential elections. The party won the state at every election from 1952 to 1988, bar 1964, when it fell to the Democrats in Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory. Yet California is now solidly Democratic. Not a single Republican holds statewide office. Tonight’s event is being held at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, a poignant reminder of a golden age for Republicans in the Golden State. Reagan took 52.7% of the vote in California in the 1980 election, higher than the 50.1% he picked up nationally. By 1984 he had even managed to increase his support among Latinos in the state to 45%. But by 2012 the Republicans’ Mitt Romney won just 37% of the vote in California, ten points below his share across the country. Nor can Republicans take comfort from the rise of independent voters who do not identify with either party: most of them are likely to lean Democrat.

Why did the party of Reagan fall so far in his home state? One reason was a sharp tack to the right on immigration in the 1990s. The turning point came in 1994 with Proposition 187, a ballot measure that upped the anti-immigrant rhetoric and tried to roll back welfare for migrants. This was followed by Republican measures to outlaw bilingual education and curtail affirmative action, just as the state’s Hispanic and Asian populations were growing and organising politically. Jim Brulte, the chairman of California’s Republicans, admitted to the Washington Post in April this year that the party had not reacted quickly enough to demographic changes “and we have paid a horrible price”.

Does it matter? Republicans can take the White House without winning California, though George W. Bush has been the only Republican candidate to do so since James Garfield in 1880. The state's 55 electoral-college votes are a fifth of the 270 needed to win the presidency. The candidates at the Reagan library might want to reflect on that as they try to outflank each other to the right over immigration.