What if the California senatorial race had had a Republican candidate?

[Kerrington]

Would it have had an affect on the presidential race in California?
I guess many Republicans stayed at home this year since they knew that neither Trump nor a GOP candidate for Senate would win their vote. That's why I assume that California voted even more Democratic than it had already done before.
In 2012, a very Democratic-leaning presidential year, Elizabeth Emken received 4,713,887 votes.
Hence, with a GOP candidate on the senatorial ballot, Clinton might have even lost her nationwide popular vote win.

This question is about Clinton's nationwide popular vote!

[Lachi]

It would have been closer, but there's no way she would have lost it.

[LLR]

Let's dispel with this fiction that people vote upballot based on downballot races. That's just not a thing. And it wouldn't have cost her 2.6 million votes. No way.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The Senate race wasn't going to be competitive either way. What's dumb is some are saying how amazing it was that Harris won big in some Republican county. That's not that hard to do when the other candidate is also a Democrat.

[Kerrington]

Let's dispel with this fiction that people vote upballot based on downballot races. That's just not a thing. And it wouldn't have cost her 2.6 million votes. No way.

The other way round: It wouldn't have cost Clinton 2.6 million votes, but Trump might have gotten 2.6 additional votes.

[Mike67]

No dark blue California would still have been all in for Hillary.

[Kerrington]

No dark blue California would still have been all in for Hillary.

That wasn't my question.

[vote for pedro]

Would it have had an affect on the presidential race in California?
I guess many Republicans stayed at home this year since they knew that neither Trump nor a GOP candidate for Senate would win their vote. That's why I assume that California voted even more Democratic than it had already done before.
In 2012, a very Democratic-leaning presidential year, Elizabeth Emken received 4,713,887 votes.
Hence, with a GOP candidate on the senatorial ballot, Clinton might have even lost her nationwide popular vote win.

This question is about Clinton's nationwide popular vote!

I say no.  The argument is that some California Republicans stayed home due to no Republican Senator on the ballot...  Okay maybe, but not 2.8 million of them.  

Edit:

Her victory in California is just gaudy ridiculous.  +4.3 million votes!?!?!

So outside of California she trails Trump by 1.5 million popular votes.  That is amazing.

[catographer]

If the D v. D senate race negatively affected turnout in Republican areas, we would've seen a drop in turnout in Republican counties as well as probably a decrease in turnout from the 2012 election which had a D v. R senate race. Instead we saw turnout increase and decrease mostly irrespective of whether a county was Republican-leaning, and the turnout rate was higher than 2012.

The senate race wouldn't have been competitive either way. 2014's gubernatorial race was a snooze, I doubt anyone would've realized it was happening if you had asked them.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Let's dispel with this fiction that Clinton won so big CA because of low turnout. Turnout in CA was actually up from 2012.

[Mr. Smith]

The Senate race wasn't going to be competitive either way. What's dumb is some are saying how amazing it was that Harris won big in some Republican county. That's not that hard to do when the other candidate is also a Democrat.

And an embarrassingly incompetent one at campaigning at that.

[nclib]

No way. Even if Cal. had voted for Pres. by the same margin as 2012, HRC would have still won the popular vote. In this scenario, there would be slightly higher turnout among Cal. Repubs, but not much as the Repub candidate would have been assumed to lose.

[Figueira]

They still had their House candidates to vote for. Sure, most of those weren't competitive, but it's not like the Senate race would have been either.

[I’m not Stu]

They still had their House candidates to vote for. Sure, most of those weren't competitive, but it's not like the Senate race would have been either.

In many districts, they didn't have their House candidates to vote for. Look at CA-12, CA-29, CA-37, CA-44, and CA-17.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Hillary won California by close to 4.3 million, Obama won California by more than 3 million.  Even if she had won by the same margin as Obama, she would still have a huge lead nationally.