California post-election analysis thread

[kwabbit]

This state is becoming red-pilled. I live in San Francisco and voters here are turning on the Democratic Party over concerns about crime and homelessness they've been tricked into thinking are the result of democratic or progressive leadership.

My favorite question to local: any Republicans elected on county and city (>-10000) posts in Bay Area? Perusing 9 counties results i don't see any - Democrats and Indies only.....

The shift largely isn't seen in the Bay Area.  The medium term risk for CA Dems is the rest of the state rising up against the Bay Area.

Any GOP victory or close miss in California would have to result from a regionalist factor. This was already somewhat present in 2022, where the Bay shifted but not as much as the rest of the state. It would have to pit a left-wing Bay Area figure against a popular SoCal figure in a Dem midterm.

Ro Khanna or Kounalakis vs. Mike Garcia in 2026 after Biden wins is the best matchup the GOP could get. They would need someone with Bay Area slime like Khanna that is easy to paint as a too Silicon-Valley oriented and alien to the rest of the state.

[kwabbit]

Stanislaus city-level results and swings:



Ceres in particular surprised me.

Wow no wonder Democrats lost the congressional race there. Really awful results for Democrats in Stanislaus County which doesn't surprise me given my anecdotal experiences there, but it demographically is surprising given general trends of tech worker exodus from the Bay Area. Maybe those who are moving to the Central Valley represent more anti-establishment voters?

Then again Newsom is just a terrible fit for the Central Valley and Southern California overall so it may just be him.

It was my perception that tech workers are moving more into San Joaquin County than Stanislaus. Josh Harder did well in San Joaquin, and that may be a reason, but Stanislaus was quite bad for Dems this cycle.

How far from the Bay would tech workers actually live? If you're living in Tracy, you're already pushing the daily commute limit and it's still a lot for the occasional commute. Someone living in Modesto would have to be near remote, in which case they might want to live somewhere more amenable than Modesto.

[kwabbit]

Wow no wonder Democrats lost the congressional race there. Really awful results for Democrats in Stanislaus County which doesn't surprise me given my anecdotal experiences there, but it demographically is surprising given general trends of tech worker exodus from the Bay Area. Maybe those who are moving to the Central Valley represent more anti-establishment voters?

Then again Newsom is just a terrible fit for the Central Valley and Southern California overall so it may just be him.

It was my perception that tech workers are moving more into San Joaquin County than Stanislaus. Josh Harder did well in San Joaquin, and that may be a reason, but Stanislaus was quite bad for Dems this cycle.

How far from the Bay would tech workers actually live? If you're living in Tracy, you're already pushing the daily commute limit and it's still a lot for the occasional commute. Someone living in Modesto would have to be near remote, in which case they might want to live somewhere more amenable than Modesto.

Obviously this is only my personal perspective - but all the people I know from Modesto are Bay Area commuters or formerly commuters (now work remotely full or part-time). However these are all conservatives who sought out Modesto to get away from the Bay Area while still having amenities such as good schools, access to medical care, etc.

I agree that Tracy and maybe Manteca are the outer limits of daily commuters - but parts of Stanislaus County like Salida are definitely drawing commuters. Obviously not enough at this point to overpower the other trends that are occurring.

https://www.protocol.com/silicon-valley-tech-shuttles

All that being said - every metro area has its exurbs that tend to be quite strongly GOP relative to the core city. The Bay Area is one of the few places that doesn't really see this trend in any direction except in Oakley, parts of San Joaquin County, and I would argue Stanislaus County as well. It just surprises me that this area is trending so strongly towards the GOP relative to other exurban areas in CA like Placer County or the Inland Empire.

I'm not from CA, but my perception is that San Joaquin is not an exurb of the Bay; it is primarily a Central Valley Ag County like Stanislaus that has some Bay Area exurban spillover. Neither county would qualify as part of the Bay metro in my eyes, with San Joaquin being maybe 25% orientation to the Metro and Stanislaus like 5%.

They are not trending blue because Hispanics + traditionally working class Asian ethnicities make up more than half the population. Placer is very White for California and is oriented almost entirely with the Sac metro.

IE is more complicated, but it's hard to say if it's still trending blue. IE trended hard blue in 2008 and 2016, but I think it's stabilized. Trump did fine in 2020, not losing that much ground, and the GOP did relatively well in the recall and in 2022. The Democrats aren't getting obliterated with IE Whites anymore so there's slower gains while the GOP gains with Hispanics will balance that out.

[kwabbit]

Wow no wonder Democrats lost the congressional race there. Really awful results for Democrats in Stanislaus County which doesn't surprise me given my anecdotal experiences there, but it demographically is surprising given general trends of tech worker exodus from the Bay Area. Maybe those who are moving to the Central Valley represent more anti-establishment voters?

Then again Newsom is just a terrible fit for the Central Valley and Southern California overall so it may just be him.

It was my perception that tech workers are moving more into San Joaquin County than Stanislaus. Josh Harder did well in San Joaquin, and that may be a reason, but Stanislaus was quite bad for Dems this cycle.

How far from the Bay would tech workers actually live? If you're living in Tracy, you're already pushing the daily commute limit and it's still a lot for the occasional commute. Someone living in Modesto would have to be near remote, in which case they might want to live somewhere more amenable than Modesto.

Obviously this is only my personal perspective - but all the people I know from Modesto are Bay Area commuters or formerly commuters (now work remotely full or part-time). However these are all conservatives who sought out Modesto to get away from the Bay Area while still having amenities such as good schools, access to medical care, etc.

I agree that Tracy and maybe Manteca are the outer limits of daily commuters - but parts of Stanislaus County like Salida are definitely drawing commuters. Obviously not enough at this point to overpower the other trends that are occurring.

https://www.protocol.com/silicon-valley-tech-shuttles

All that being said - every metro area has its exurbs that tend to be quite strongly GOP relative to the core city. The Bay Area is one of the few places that doesn't really see this trend in any direction except in Oakley, parts of San Joaquin County, and I would argue Stanislaus County as well. It just surprises me that this area is trending so strongly towards the GOP relative to other exurban areas in CA like Placer County or the Inland Empire.

Stanislaus County is not in any meaningful sense a Bay Area exurb. Outside of maybe Patterson, Bay Area commuters are only a tiny minority. The economy is mostly a typical Central Valley ag-based economy.

The Salida bus mentioned in the article you linked is for blue-collar workers at Tesla's factory, whose starting pay when the article was published was $19 an hour. Tech workers are going to be making a lot money than this, and therefore tech supercommuters presumably live closer to the Bay than places like Salida. (plus, tech workers mostly work 9-5 or similar. The hour-and-a-half journey from Salida to Fremont for the 4am shift involves no traffic. It would take twice as long during normal commute times.) I imagine the blue-collar workers at Tesla's factory who live in the Valley are much more conservative than the techies who live in the Valley.

Stanislaus city-level results and swings:



Ceres in particular surprised me.

Wow no wonder Democrats lost the congressional race there. Really awful results for Democrats in Stanislaus County which doesn't surprise me given my anecdotal experiences there, but it demographically is surprising given general trends of tech worker exodus from the Bay Area. Maybe those who are moving to the Central Valley represent more anti-establishment voters?

Then again Newsom is just a terrible fit for the Central Valley and Southern California overall so it may just be him.

It was my perception that tech workers are moving more into San Joaquin County than Stanislaus. Josh Harder did well in San Joaquin, and that may be a reason, but Stanislaus was quite bad for Dems this cycle.

How far from the Bay would tech workers actually live? If you're living in Tracy, you're already pushing the daily commute limit and it's still a lot for the occasional commute. Someone living in Modesto would have to be near remote, in which case they might want to live somewhere more amenable than Modesto.

Stanislaus County probably actually has fewer Bay Area commuters than either of San Joaquin or Merced counties. In Merced County, Los Banos is a fast-growing town that's become a bedroom community for South Bay supercommuters.

The Central Valley is mostly a mix of Hispanics and downscale rural/exurban whites - both GOP-trending groups - in an agriculture-oriented economy. That's all the ingredients for a rapid rightward trend nowadays.

Do you know why San Joaquin has a lot of Filipino, Hmong, Vietnamese immigrants? When I first looked at DRA I thought the high Asian population in west San Joaquin, where commuting could happen, was from Indians working in tech, but that is not the case.