What would it take for California to vote Republican again?

[Kamala's side hoe]

CA is trending Republican. It was one of only a few states to swing to the right in 2020, and in 2022, both Padilla and Newsom (especially Newsom) really underperformed (particularly in SoCal, it seems). And of course (again, mostly in SoCal), the GOP has done decently in House races in 2020 and 2022 ("decently," of course, being a very relative term - in and of itself, 11 out of 52 seats is hardly commendable, but given the circumstances, it definitely is).

CA is trending mildly R but presidential to midterm year comparisons aren’t a good indicator of this. Not that surprised Newsom “underperformed” tbh, although he held up better in the Bay Area than I would’ve expected

[Kamala's side hoe]

CA is trending mildly R

Based on what, exactly?

Higher turnout in 2020 benefitting federal Republicans relative to 2016 and an R swing in CA-GOV from 2018 (and/or the 2021 recall) to 2022 caused almost entirely by lower turnout in D-leaning areas. The latter is to be expected during a D president midterm.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Higher turnout in 2020 benefitting federal Republicans relative to 2016 and an R swing in CA-GOV from 2018 (and/or the 2021 recall) to 2022 caused almost entirely by lower turnout in D-leaning areas. The latter is to be expected during a D president midterm.

It is possible in the case of the 2022 election that longtime Democrats just refused to vote instead of vote Republicans, this isn't unheard of. The voter turnout went down for Republicans as well.
Also shouldn't higher turnout in 2020 help the Democrats? Republicans got their highest votes ever from CA that year and so did Democrats.

For 2022 CA-GOV turnout I only really paid attention to select D-leaning suburbs outside of the big cities, but it's probably also true in the core cities and rurals too.

Re: wait, is CA going to SWING R?

My theory: Record turnout = low propensity voters actually voting. In California's case, these voters are probably conservatives. Combined with Trump's improvement with Hispanics and Asians and you have California shifting towards republicans.

Edit: But also, California going from D+23 in 2012 to D+30 in 2016 to D+29 in 2020 doesn't seem that notable.

Edit 2: And it seems like there's substantially less third party vote this year. Quite possible some of those voters shifted to Trump.

Hot take: increased GOTV efforts resulted in right-leaning/anti-establishment, low-propensity Latino and Asian voters who normally wouldn’t bother voting in a Titanium D state to turn out.

I mean things can change in ways no one could expect 20-30 years from now

No one expects the Sun and Moon timeline 2036 presidential map, which tbf doesn't seem that likely given coalition trends since the timeline's writing.