How did Dem control CA legislatures from 1970s till today?

[David Hume]

Dems controlled CA legislatures from 1970s till today. Both Nixon and Reagan are from CA, and CA voted GOP in 15+ margins. So how did Dem keep two CA houses for so long, especially in 1972, 1980 and 1984? I know ticket splitting was normal back then, like down ballot deep south. But CA had been voting R for decades.

Was it because D gerrymandered CA so aggressively that R could never win it back, even if 1984?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Latinos and Asians make up half the vote in Cali and they are on Entitlements

Not just Entitlements, Latinos intermarry with Native Americans to get Per Capita, 3K a month for their tribes that's how they can live in expensive Cali

[David Hume]

Latinos and Asians make up half the vote in Cali and they are on Entitlements

Not just Entitlements, Latinos intermarry with Native Americans to get Per Capita, 3K a month for their tribes that's how they can live in expensive Cali

but in 1970s and 80s, CA was pretty white.

[Хahar 🤔]

California isn't an aberration here; this is a pattern you see across a lot of western states in this time period, where despite voting consistently for Republicans at the presidential level (and often voting for Republican governors) the state legislature was dominated by Democrats. In the case of California, the election of 1958, which brought Pat Brown to the governor's office, effected a radical change in state politics, which had been dominated by Republicans before and would thereafter be dominated by Republicans. I don't have a good answer as to why this is (looking at color-coded state legislative maps would help, but I've never seen one), but it may help to know that this isn't an isolated case.

[Skill and Chance]

The 2 Reagan landslides and the Nixon 1972 landslide were almost unique in US history for having little or no downballot impact at all (Reagan 1980 did flip the Senate but that was it).  This is fundamentally the reason, but I still don't understand how a presidential candidate could do that well in the PV without impacting state level elections, especially in a post VRA world?

[Tintrlvr]

Back in the 70s and 80s, a significant portion of the Democratic vote in California came from ex-Southerners, who stayed as loyal to the Democrats in California downballot as they would have if they still lived in Arkansas or Alabama.

[Skill and Chance]

Back in the 70s and 80s, a significant portion of the Democratic vote in California came from ex-Southerners, who stayed as loyal to the Democrats in California downballot as they would have if they still lived in Arkansas or Alabama.

It's crazy to me that the Civil War was still a significant factor in people's voting patterns as late as 1980, and arguably as late as 2000.  Most voters' grandparents were born after the Civil War/Reconstruction era at that point. 

[DrScholl]

Democrats held some seats in the rural, logging counties and in the Central Valley. Republicans were fairly packed into suburban SoCal and had poorer vote distribution when it came to the legislature.

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

Latinos and Asians make up half the vote in Cali and they are on Entitlements

Not just Entitlements, Latinos intermarry with Native Americans to get Per Capita, 3K a month for their tribes that's how they can live in expensive Cali

but in 1970s and 80s, CA was pretty white.

True. California was 76.3%   White in 1970, 66.6% White in 1980, and 57.2%   in 1990 per the census.

[Skill and Chance]

Democrats held some seats in the rural, logging counties and in the Central Valley. Republicans were fairly packed into suburban SoCal and had poorer vote distribution when it came to the legislature.

Interesting, so it sounds like it was just an extension of the Republican natural packing in the Sunbelt during the same period? 

Note that they did manage to flip the lower house by 1 seat after 1994 and briefly flipped both houses under Reagan. 

Also, the legislature was dominated by Republicans until 1958, so I don't love the New Deal Coalition explanation.  Even at the height of the FDR landslides, Democrats only flipped the lower house and only for 6 years.   

[Mr.Phips]

The 2 Reagan landslides and the Nixon 1972 landslide were almost unique in US history for having little or no downballot impact at all (Reagan 1980 did flip the Senate but that was it).  This is fundamentally the reason, but I still don't understand how a presidential candidate could do that well in the PV without impacting state level elections, especially in a post VRA world?

The two Reagan landslides actually resulted in Republicans picking up almost 700 state legislative seats  between the two of them and resulted in Republicans winning control of the PA, MI, and OH state senates, which they have not given up control of since.  The 1982 and 1986 midterms resulted in Dems picking up less than 400 seats between them, meaning that Republicans held onto a good amount of what they gained in the Reagan landslides long term.

I remember Ed Rollins (Reagan’s 1984 campaign manager) said that their campaign made sure to only deliberately turnout voters that were going to vote straight Republican all the way down the ballot (Biden’s campaign should have done this in 2020, but for Dems obviously), which resulted in Republicans gaining around 350 state legislative seats nationwide in 1984.

[David Hume]

California isn't an aberration here; this is a pattern you see across a lot of western states in this time period, where despite voting consistently for Republicans at the presidential level (and often voting for Republican governors) the state legislature was dominated by Democrats. In the case of California, the election of 1958, which brought Pat Brown to the governor's office, effected a radical change in state politics, which had been dominated by Republicans before and would thereafter be dominated by Republicans. I don't have a good answer as to why this is (looking at color-coded state legislative maps would help, but I've never seen one), but it may help to know that this isn't an isolated case.

Thanks for your reply, but I just find it hard to understand how Dem control both houses in the whole 70s and 80s in a republican leaning state. Why couldn't local republicans win elections? The only reason I can come up with is aggressive gerrymander.

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

California isn't an aberration here; this is a pattern you see across a lot of western states in this time period, where despite voting consistently for Republicans at the presidential level (and often voting for Republican governors) the state legislature was dominated by Democrats. In the case of California, the election of 1958, which brought Pat Brown to the governor's office, effected a radical change in state politics, which had been dominated by Republicans before and would thereafter be dominated by Republicans. I don't have a good answer as to why this is (looking at color-coded state legislative maps would help, but I've never seen one), but it may help to know that this isn't an isolated case.

Thanks for your reply, but I just find it hard to understand how Dem control both houses in the whole 70s and 80s in a republican leaning state. Why couldn't local republicans win elections? The only reason I can come up with is aggressive gerrymander.

Gerrymandering wasn't as prevalent in the 70s/80s as it is today, due to the fact that computers have made doing it a lot easier.

Democrats have won the Popular Vote in the State House every year since the 90s.

[Indy Texas]

Democrats held some seats in the rural, logging counties and in the Central Valley. Republicans were fairly packed into suburban SoCal and had poorer vote distribution when it came to the legislature.

How did they do in the Bay Area? Wasn't that the "ancestrally Republican" part of the state in its early years?

[David Hume]

California isn't an aberration here; this is a pattern you see across a lot of western states in this time period, where despite voting consistently for Republicans at the presidential level (and often voting for Republican governors) the state legislature was dominated by Democrats. In the case of California, the election of 1958, which brought Pat Brown to the governor's office, effected a radical change in state politics, which had been dominated by Republicans before and would thereafter be dominated by Republicans. I don't have a good answer as to why this is (looking at color-coded state legislative maps would help, but I've never seen one), but it may help to know that this isn't an isolated case.

Thanks for your reply, but I just find it hard to understand how Dem control both houses in the whole 70s and 80s in a republican leaning state. Why couldn't local republicans win elections? The only reason I can come up with is aggressive gerrymander.

Gerrymandering wasn't as prevalent in the 70s/80s as it is today, due to the fact that computers have made doing it a lot easier.

Democrats have won the Popular Vote in the State House every year since the 90s.

Well, the word "gerrymander" came into existence long before that time for a reason. Optimizing your map is not that hard as a mathematical problem.

It's completely understandable Democrats have won the Popular Vote in the State House every year since the 90s. What I cannot understand is in the 60s, 70s, 80s.

[freepcrusher]

Democrats held some seats in the rural, logging counties and in the Central Valley. Republicans were fairly packed into suburban SoCal and had poorer vote distribution when it came to the legislature.

Also, the legislature was dominated by Republicans until 1958, so I don't love the New Deal Coalition explanation.  Even at the height of the FDR landslides, Democrats only flipped the lower house and only for 6 years.   

California has its own unique brand of progressive republicanism at the time exemplified by Hiram Johnson and later by Warren or Kuchel. As the republican party became birchified (at least in socal) that helped the dems win.

[Mr. Smith]

Simple.

Anti-Nammers were solidly D, combined with Dust Bowl Ex-Southerners combined to overtake the GOP in total voters, which clearly translated to the legislature.

Only reason this didn't translate to the top of the ticket is because Dems decided to keep chasing The South.

McGovern had a very good performance in the state when considering everything, and Frank Church would've been a shoo-in to flip in '76...but the top ticket kept picking the worst choices possible for the state, and that wasn't help by Reagan either. Naturally, despite the numbers and legislative hold, it seems the state was backburnered until '88.

[Oryxslayer]

California isn't an aberration here; this is a pattern you see across a lot of western states in this time period, where despite voting consistently for Republicans at the presidential level (and often voting for Republican governors) the state legislature was dominated by Democrats. In the case of California, the election of 1958, which brought Pat Brown to the governor's office, effected a radical change in state politics, which had been dominated by Republicans before and would thereafter be dominated by Republicans. I don't have a good answer as to why this is (looking at color-coded state legislative maps would help, but I've never seen one), but it may help to know that this isn't an isolated case.

Thanks for your reply, but I just find it hard to understand how Dem control both houses in the whole 70s and 80s in a republican leaning state. Why couldn't local republicans win elections? The only reason I can come up with is aggressive gerrymander.

Gerrymandering wasn't as prevalent in the 70s/80s as it is today, due to the fact that computers have made doing it a lot easier.

Democrats have won the Popular Vote in the State House every year since the 90s.

Well, the word "gerrymander" came into existence long before that time for a reason. Optimizing your map is not that hard as a mathematical problem.

It's completely understandable Democrats have won the Popular Vote in the State House every year since the 90s. What I cannot understand is in the 60s, 70s, 80s.

The simple answer is that the Sun Belt geographically favors Democrats, and has for about 50-60 years, albeit on a comparative scale. A state can be 50-50 and have a fair map, but because one parties voters are more efficiently distributed they get more seats. Modern Wisconsin for instance is a great exampe of this: The GOP certainly gerrymandered but the outcomes likely wouldn'y drastically change under a fair map. The median precinct is like 55-60% R 45-40% D, and most of the Blue precincts are titanium blue. This means there is a lot more red on the map, though that red isn't overwhelming which is why Wisconsin is a swing state.

Now, why the Sun Belt's Geography benefits Democrats and allows them to outperform the assumed legislative distribution. The Southwestern democratic coalition for most of the modern era has been rotating groups of whites and minorities. Once it was Texas's ranching or CA's logging whites, and now it is suburban whites. Joining them were some liberal-hotspot whites like Austin, SF, or Flagstaff. The thing is, the minority population in the Southwest is and has been largely Hispanic, with other groups intermingled. Hispanic voters have poor voter registration and participation numbers when compared to other demographics. We apportion seats by population, so this leads to seats with far less voters than the average seat, but still are safely Democratic. Obviously this is all comparative based on the topline, but it is consistent.

In California's past these seats were not as widespread as now, in part because we now have the VRA districts, but they still existed because of minority concentration in certain neighborhoods and communities. California was then near a 50-50 state, and the democrats utilizing less of their 50% to safely win several districts meant that there were more Democratic voters elsewhere to win the party more seats. Throw in GOP self-packing - once in the suburbs and cold war boom areas, now in the rurals - and you get a  geographic distribution favorable to the Democrats. In the past low voter registration also carried over to certain Asian groups, which also compounded Dem advanatges.

A good example today is Nevada. Nevada is a Dem-favoring swing state, but Dems presently have a assembly majority - and last session a supermajority. The GOP won the popular vote for the Assembly elections in 2020. But there is no real gerrymandering on the current map. Its just that the Democrats dominate a bunch of seats with 20K voters or less, and the average GOP or competative seat has 30-40K.

[David Hume]

California isn't an aberration here; this is a pattern you see across a lot of western states in this time period, where despite voting consistently for Republicans at the presidential level (and often voting for Republican governors) the state legislature was dominated by Democrats. In the case of California, the election of 1958, which brought Pat Brown to the governor's office, effected a radical change in state politics, which had been dominated by Republicans before and would thereafter be dominated by Republicans. I don't have a good answer as to why this is (looking at color-coded state legislative maps would help, but I've never seen one), but it may help to know that this isn't an isolated case.

Thanks for your reply, but I just find it hard to understand how Dem control both houses in the whole 70s and 80s in a republican leaning state. Why couldn't local republicans win elections? The only reason I can come up with is aggressive gerrymander.

Gerrymandering wasn't as prevalent in the 70s/80s as it is today, due to the fact that computers have made doing it a lot easier.

Democrats have won the Popular Vote in the State House every year since the 90s.

Well, the word "gerrymander" came into existence long before that time for a reason. Optimizing your map is not that hard as a mathematical problem.

It's completely understandable Democrats have won the Popular Vote in the State House every year since the 90s. What I cannot understand is in the 60s, 70s, 80s.

The simple answer is that the Sun Belt geographically favors Democrats, and has for about 50-60 years, albeit on a comparative scale. A state can be 50-50 and have a fair map, but because one parties voters are more efficiently distributed they get more seats. Modern Wisconsin for instance is a great exampe of this: The GOP certainly gerrymandered but the outcomes likely wouldn'y drastically change under a fair map. The median precinct is like 55-60% R 45-40% D, and most of the Blue precincts are titanium blue. This means there is a lot more red on the map, though that red isn't overwhelming which is why Wisconsin is a swing state.

Now, why the Sun Belt's Geography benefits Democrats and allows them to outperform the assumed legislative distribution. The Southwestern democratic coalition for most of the modern era has been rotating groups of whites and minorities. Once it was Texas's ranching or CA's logging whites, and now it is suburban whites. Joining them were some liberal-hotspot whites like Austin, SF, or Flagstaff. The thing is, the minority population in the Southwest is and has been largely Hispanic, with other groups intermingled. Hispanic voters have poor voter registration and participation numbers when compared to other demographics. We apportion seats by population, so this leads to seats with far less voters than the average seat, but still are safely Democratic. Obviously this is all comparative based on the topline, but it is consistent.

In California's past these seats were not as widespread as now, in part because we now have the VRA districts, but they still existed because of minority concentration in certain neighborhoods and communities. California was then near a 50-50 state, and the democrats utilizing less of their 50% to safely win several districts meant that there were more Democratic voters elsewhere to win the party more seats. Throw in GOP self-packing - once in the suburbs and cold war boom areas, now in the rurals - and you get a  geographic distribution favorable to the Democrats. In the past low voter registration also carried over to certain Asian groups, which also compounded Dem advanatges.

A good example today is Nevada. Nevada is a Dem-favoring swing state, but Dems presently have a assembly majority - and last session a supermajority. The GOP won the popular vote for the Assembly elections in 2020. But there is no real gerrymandering on the current map. Its just that the Democrats dominate a bunch of seats with 20K voters or less, and the average GOP or competative seat has 30-40K.

Great points! Thanks!

One question, why districts with concentration of low voting rate minorities always went for dems? I read something saying that first generation Asian immigrants were strongly GOP back then.

And if GOP noticed this, didn't they try to gerrymander to win those seats when they were in control, or it was just too hard?

For down ballot Dem voting solid south after 1968, there were a few factors: loyalty to Dem, gerrymandering, and GOP self-packing, how would you rank their contribution?

[Oryxslayer]

SNIP

Great points! Thanks!

One question, why districts with concentration of low voting rate minorities always went for dems? I read something saying that first generation Asian immigrants were strongly GOP back then.

And if GOP noticed this, didn't they try to gerrymander to win those seats when they were in control, or it was just too hard?

For down ballot Dem voting solid south after 1968, there were a few factors: loyalty to Dem, gerrymandering, and GOP self-packing, how would you rank their contribution?

Not always, as you note. Asian demographic breakdowns upon early arrival in CA is complicated, but generally those escaping Socialist regimes with some resources to fall back on went GOP, but that is only a single piece of the picture.

I can't comment on gerrymandering other than pre-computers exquisite gerrymandering was difficult. One had to do deep research for precinct data, and then stencil it out into a precinct map. GIS pre-computers was a full time job, whereas now I do it as a pastime. The best data available was at larger, easily consolidate able city/county levels.

For reference, all the previous discussion is related to the Southwest, every region is different. When concerning the south though you have to follow the timeline. Rural whites were loyal to the Dems for a generation after the presidential patterns flipped, and it shouldn't be a surprise that it was a generation. Reflexive partisan Voter loyalties, such as those once in place across the solid south, don't break easily. One also needs to remember that we live in a world of information, one only could know the interworkings of congressional powerbrokers from the nightly news or a political almanac. Its far easier to separate local and nation parties when the streams of information about each are actually different rather than one uniform super-brand.

When it came to the South, White Rural Dems plus a gradually registering African American base kept local dems in power until around the 80s. Then cracks began to show and the authoritarian tendencies of the southern political systems surged forward. The GOP might be able to win statewide offices, but they were self-packed into suburbs and research cities and could not win the legislature. So the legislature weakened the statewide offices. Gerrymandering truly became a real thing, and it got worse as statewide Dems lost more and more of their floor. The bottom fell out in each state at a different time, but it always did.

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

California isn't an aberration here; this is a pattern you see across a lot of western states in this time period, where despite voting consistently for Republicans at the presidential level (and often voting for Republican governors) the state legislature was dominated by Democrats. In the case of California, the election of 1958, which brought Pat Brown to the governor's office, effected a radical change in state politics, which had been dominated by Republicans before and would thereafter be dominated by Republicans. I don't have a good answer as to why this is (looking at color-coded state legislative maps would help, but I've never seen one), but it may help to know that this isn't an isolated case.

Thanks for your reply, but I just find it hard to understand how Dem control both houses in the whole 70s and 80s in a republican leaning state. Why couldn't local republicans win elections? The only reason I can come up with is aggressive gerrymander.

Gerrymandering wasn't as prevalent in the 70s/80s as it is today, due to the fact that computers have made doing it a lot easier.

Democrats have won the Popular Vote in the State House every year since the 90s.

Well, the word "gerrymander" came into existence long before that time for a reason. Optimizing your map is not that hard as a mathematical problem.

It's completely understandable Democrats have won the Popular Vote in the State House every year since the 90s. What I cannot understand is in the 60s, 70s, 80s.

Democrats generally did well down-ballot in the 60s/70s due to Civil Rights/Watergate, CA was not different. Ds had 292 House Seats after 1976.

[Alcibiades]

Another thing to note is that in the time period, CA also always had a majority Dem delegation in the US House (with the exception of the two years following the 1994 landslide, when the delegation was tied), so it definitely seems that Dems had a clear natural geographical advantage.

In addition, Democrats were consistently more popular downballot than at the national level in this period. The same factors that enabled them to hold the US House uninterrupted from 1955 to 1995 (i.e. the New Deal coalition remaining intact for several more decades after it had collapsed at the presidential level) extended to state legislatures.

California was also not an especially Republican state, a fact masked by a series of landslides and particular candidates in presidential elections. In 1972, 1984 and 1988, it actually voted to the left of the nation, and in 1976 and 1980 you had the fact that Carter was an exceptionally poor fit for the West, and Reagan’s favourite son effect. It is not difficult to see why Democrats, with that downballot boost, would be able to have a consistent edge in a state which was naturally split pretty 50-50 between the two parties, maybe even slightly in the Democrats’ favour, who always retained a party registration advantage.

I don’t have access to any maps of the state legislature by party in this period, but if it was anything like the US House, Dems would have dominated in the Bay Area*, LA County (which was often able to match, if not outvote, the uber-Republican surroundings), and won the Central Valley (with its ancestrally Democratic Okies and Arkies) and possibly the New Deal, logging-based rural northeast.

_{*The Bay Area was one of the few areas in the entire United States to trend Democratic in the 1980s - Marin and Santa Cruz were among the few Reagan ‘80-Mondale ‘84 counties, and Dukakis won every Bay Area county bar Napa in 1988. I suspect this trend was due to the region having been one of the few with a genuinely liberal Republican tradition (as opposed to merely moderate centre-right), which Reagan was anathema to, the hippies who had settled down following their youthful exploits becoming a key part of the electorate, and Silicon Valley really becoming a big thing - not only were many early entrepreneurs counterculture veterans who deliberately spurned traditional corporate culture, but the Democrats, with their Atari Democrat faction, were seen as being sympathetic towards the budding tech industry.}

[Coastal Elitist]

Gerrymandering. Just look at the congressional popular vote in the 80s compared to the number of seats each party got. I can't find legislative popular vote numbers from that time but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar story. The Democrats even boasted about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_in_California#1980_census