Biden and Trump both gained about 2% in California compared to how Clinton and Trump himself had done in 2016, with a decline in the third-party vote. Obviously, they also both gained in terms of raw number of votes-especially Biden, given the massive increase in turnout this year. 29% is still a very wide margin, but I think that the results here do reflect Trump's improvement among minority voters (i.e. Biden doing worse than Clinton in heavily Hispanic Imperial County); Biden's overall gain in the state over Clinton can be attributed to his gains among white voters, especially college-educated whites and white men, although he certainly received a higher raw number of nonwhite votes than Clinton did, again due to the increase in turnout.
45 increased his share of the vote by close to 3%. It doesn’t really bother me that the state as a whole swing ~1% R, it’s where most of the swing came from- San Jose and Los Angeles.
I get that Hillary was a uniquely good fit for California’s heavily college-educated, Latino, and Asian electorate. And the polls did suggest 45 increased his support among nonwhite groups from 2016. I understand how COVID-19 hampered the Dems’ ground game, and how lockdowns made many service-sector employees more receptive to the incumbent than they otherwise would be. But even so, it was surprising to see Trump do as well with those groups as I imagined only a hypothetical President Rubio would or even could.
