California was a red state from 1952 through 1988, voting Republican in every presidential election across that stretch except one. The lone break came in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson’s landslide over Barry Goldwater swept most of the country, California included. Starting in 1992, the state flipped to the Democratic column and has stayed there in every presidential election since.1Public Policy Institute of California. How Has Party Voting Changed in California?
The Republican Era: 1952 Through 1988
For nearly four decades, California was reliable Republican territory in presidential politics. Nine of ten elections from 1952 to 1988 went to the GOP nominee.1Public Policy Institute of California. How Has Party Voting Changed in California? Some of those wins were landslides. Others were squeakers. Richard Nixon barely carried his home state against John F. Kennedy in 1960, winning by less than a percentage point.2The American Presidency Project. 1960 Presidential Election Results Gerald Ford held California by a similarly narrow margin over Jimmy Carter in 1976.3The American Presidency Project. 1976 Presidential Election Results Close or comfortable, the state stayed in the Republican column.
The pattern wasn’t just presidential. Republicans held the governorship for long stretches of the same period and carried voter registration advantages across suburban Southern California, Orange County, and the agricultural Central Valley. California’s large bloc of electoral votes was something the national Republican Party could plan around every four years.
Two Presidents From California
During the red-state decades, California didn’t just vote Republican. It produced Republican presidents. Nixon, born in Yorba Linda, served in the U.S. House and Senate from California before becoming Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president. He lost a 1962 bid for California governor, telling reporters at his concession that they wouldn’t “have Nixon to kick around anymore.” He won the presidency six years later and carried California again in his 1972 reelection.
Ronald Reagan won the California governorship in 1966 and served two terms through 1975.4Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. Governor’s Papers He carried California easily in his 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns. His coattails were strong enough to deliver the state to George H.W. Bush in 1988, which turned out to be the last time any Republican presidential candidate would win California.1Public Policy Institute of California. How Has Party Voting Changed in California?
What Ended the Republican Era
The 1994 election cycle was the hinge. Governor Pete Wilson, a former U.S. senator who held the office from 1991 to 1999,5Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Pete Wilson made Proposition 187 a centerpiece of his reelection campaign. The ballot measure would have denied public education and non-emergency healthcare to undocumented immigrants. Voters approved it with 59 percent support. A federal district court struck down most of its provisions, ruling that immigration enforcement is exclusively a federal responsibility, and the state dropped its appeal in 1999. The measure never took effect.
The political consequences outlived the legal fight. Wilson’s championing of Proposition 187 tied the Republican brand to anti-immigrant politics just as California’s Latino and Asian American populations were growing fast. Research on voter behavior during the period found Hispanic identification with the Republican Party dropped sharply after 1994, with roughly two-thirds of the shift occurring after Proposition 187’s passage. Naturalization applications in California surged by over 500 percent between 1993 and 1996, far outpacing the rest of the country, and these new citizens overwhelmingly registered as Democrats.
Demographic change alone might have pushed California leftward eventually. Proposition 187 accelerated the timeline. As late as 2000, surveys found that most Hispanic voters in California still associated the Republican Party with Pete Wilson, and not favorably.
The Last Republican Governor
Republicans did win one more major California race after the shift. In 2003, voters recalled Democratic Governor Gray Davis in a special election driven by anger over an energy crisis and a growing budget deficit. Arnold Schwarzenegger won the replacement contest with 48.6 percent of the vote in a crowded field.6Ballotpedia. Gray Davis Recall, Governor of California (2003) He won reelection in 2006, and no Republican has won a statewide race in California since.7270toWin. California Presidential Election Voting History Schwarzenegger governed as a moderate who often broke with national Republican positions on climate change, immigration, and social issues. His appeal was personal, not partisan.
Where California Stands Now
California has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992.1Public Policy Institute of California. How Has Party Voting Changed in California? Democrats hold the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats, every other statewide office, and supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature.8Ballotpedia. California State Assembly About 47 percent of registered voters are Democrats, compared to about 24 percent Republican, with another 22 percent registered with no party preference.9California Secretary of State. Historical Voter Registration Statistics Those gaps have widened steadily for years.
Pockets of Republican support still exist in the far north near the Oregon border, in eastern counties near Nevada, and in parts of the Central Valley.10Public Policy Institute of California. California’s Political Geography 2020 But the dense coastal population centers decide statewide elections, and they lean sharply Democratic. The red-state California that elected Nixon and Reagan is now four decades in the past.