More likely to happen in California: Abolish capital punishment or elect a Republican governor?

[Adam Griffin]

Orange was only about one-fourth of the statewide margin difference between passing and failing. Yes, in a perfect (electoral) world, if Orange swung by enough to vote in favor of abolition, then the state would as well. However, that's not how things work - especially in the modern era where inner-urban, suburban and rural areas are all in flux/swinging in wildly different trajectories.

Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Kern all flipping would still leave the proposition 160k votes short statewide, with no obvious other counties where huge absolute fail/pass gains could be made. In reality, it'd have to be a bridge between these two scenarios (i.e. Orange flipping indicating that the state has flipped, and a smattering of heavily-populated anti-repeal '16 counties flipping to win the day).

The better question to ask in repealing this is: just exactly who comprises a demographic in a state where Clinton won by 30 but a death penalty repeal loses by 8 (thereby underperforming the "ideological" baseline by nearly 40 points)? There are hordes of Democrats (looks like about 1 in 3) against repealing the death penalty in CA (and given it barely passed in LA County, that includes some pretty hardcore Ds to boot).