The GOP challenge: the unspeakable ‘C-Word’

Despite encouraging news in the Senate and House elections scattered across the country, the 2020 returns did little to undermine the GOP’s recent status as a near-perennial loser in the popular vote.

In the last eight White House contests (dating back to Bill Clinton’s first run in 1992), Republicans have won the popular vote only once – with George W. Bush’s hotly contested re-election ago. sixteen years.

Surprisingly, this period of democratic rule followed two decades of consistent Republican triumphs: between 1968 and 1988, the GOP swept five of six contests, including two different landslides of 49 states (for Nixon in 68 and Reagan in 84) . Republicans have achieved such predictable success in presidential battles that liberal pundits and prognosticators have often referred to an unbreakable GOP “lock” on the Electoral College.

So how did the Democrats choose this lock, to change the Republican presidential candidates from lords into underachievers?

The answer involves a single word that has become almost indescribable in conservative circles – the dreaded C-word: California.

Today, political analysts take California’s liberal orientation so much for granted that they just shrug their shoulders in the face of the inevitable Democratic victories. California does not seem more competitive for Republicans than Wyoming for Democrats: Trump won 70% in the “Cowboy State” while polling 34% really pathetic in the “Golden State”. The difference is that Wyoming (580,000 people) provides three electoral votes while California (40 million people) delivers 55 – enough on its own to powerfully shape the outcome of most presidential races. If Trump had carried California this year, even narrowly, he would have won re-election by a comfortable margin of 287 electoral votes – even including Biden’s narrow wins in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. . Had he won the Golden State in 2016 – or even matched Hillary there – he would have won the popular vote, as well as the Electoral College.

The most depressing factor for GOP strategists trying to shape the party’s future prospects is seeing California’s largely forgotten history as the most crucial element in the Republican Party’s modern success. On the one hand, California candidates dominated domestic tickets (in Earl Warren, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan), with eight presidential or vice-presidential nominations between 1948 and 1984. Additionally, the Golden State provided a near-automatic advantage for the GOP nominees, who won California in nine of ten elections, from Eisenhower to George Herbert Walker Bush – losing only in the Barry Goldwater debacle of 1964, when Tory Cactus failed carried only his native Arizona and five southern states.

In other words, for forty years the electoral prize which became the most populous state in the Union in 1962, fell as easily and effortlessly through the Republican column as Alabama or, well, Wyoming. today. It’s worth remembering that California was as predictably a Republican as it has always been a Democrat in every presidential election since 1992.

So, what has changed to change the color of California from reliable red to infallible blue?

Obviously, demographics played a role: As census statistics show, California took over from Hawaii some 20 years ago as the second state in which non-Hispanic whites were a minority. In the 2020 election, President Trump made significant gains with Hispanic voters elsewhere in the country (especially Florida), but still had a miserable performance among California Latinos – losing 34% of the electorate in the Biden profit by an overwhelming 77-21% margin. It also lost the important Asian and American state vote with a similar ratio of 76-23%.

But the most significant contribution to the crushing defeat of the Trump-Pence ticket in California came from non-Hispanic whites, who still represent the largest ethnic segment (47%) of voters in the state. There, Biden-Harris won with a solid 53-45% margin. In other words, Trump would have lost the state decisively even if non-white voters had never turned up at the polls.

It’s worth asking why the Republicans lost the white vote in California when they prevailed in that group by a significant advantage (58-41%) nationwide. Golden State’s underperformance for this year’s ticket implies abject failure of independent voters (62-32%) and even among self-identified Republicans, where Biden garnered 11% of their vote (vs. meager 2% Democrats in California who Trump won). Suburban voters (nearly half of the state’s electorate) bowed to Biden by 60-38 percent – similar to his latest statewide advantage.

In other words, despite local success in reclaiming a few seats in Congress in 2020 (the delegation now numbers 42 Democrats and 11 Republicans), California continues to look like a one-party stronghold where GOP candidates are doomed. to play the role of -rans in any statewide competition.

There are no easy fixes for Republican presidential candidates in 2024 or beyond – whether it’s Trump again, or Nikki Haley, or Tom Cotton or Ben Sasse, or an as yet unannounced Tory messiah – to overcome the California challenge of the Republican future. But it should be clear that the GOP candidates won’t build any new winning streak unless they manage to compete more sustainably in the country’s largest state that has played such a crucial role in Republican success in the past. .