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.
Ugh, I feel this so hard, especially the swing in San Jose and the Bay Area. I seriously can't believe people voted for this absolute idiot over stimulus checks and toned down rhetoric on immigration while Democrats fight for a second stimulus and people like Stephen Miller are clearly influencing policy. On that note, I wonder if a reason for the lack of swing in educated and wealthy areas may also be attributed to the lack stimulus there. No one I personally know got money so our minds were entirely unchanged, but I would imagine getting money with Trump's name would indeed sway votes. I'm also surprised that San Mateo barely budged left, although I think the higher White population there is responsible for that, similar to what we see in Contra Costa and especially in Marin. I'd like to think Hillary Clinton has been somewhat vindicated in this case and she had some actual appeal to Asian and Hispanic voters (also seen in the primary), but there are too many circumstances at play to extrapolate reasons for the swings we see.
I do think this year indicates exactly the next places Democrats should target in CA though: the Central Valley + Sacramento Suburbs/Ski Country. Running higher margins in Fresno, Merced, Stanislaus, and San Joaquin, flipping Placer and Kern, and getting El Dorado and Tulare to a 50/50 by the end of this decade should help concentrate the GOP in only the Northeastern corner of the state. Biden's win here in Inyo seems to be indicative of the fact that long-standing GOP areas can and will eventually flip.
