Why did Harris hold up so well in Orange County, CA?

[Tekken_Guy]

You'd expect this county to also have zoomed right like the other SoCal Counties. It's 34% Hispanic and 21% Asian.

[有爭議嘅領土 of The Figgis Agency]

Orange County swung R by over 6 points. She got 120k fewer votes than Biden did while Trump got 22k fewer votes than in 2020.

Honestly she didn't hold up especially well anywhere in SoCal.


https://twitter.com/politicsmaps/status/1864384632164102632

Harris lost a lot of support in Latino and (non-Vietnamese) Asian parts of the county. Here are some 2020-2024 swings:
Santa Ana: R +15.1%
La Habra: R +10.6%
Anaheim: R +10.3%
Buena Park: R +10.0%
Costa Mesa: R +9.3%
Irvine: R +9.0%

But Harris actually improved on Biden's performance in some places.
Laguna Woods (83% over 65): D +5.5% (!)
Seal Beach (44% over 65): D +3.1 (!)
Westminster (many Vietnamese voters): D +0.2

[RBH]

is there some sort of California Attorney General's Office thing from 2011 to 2016 thing that would explain Harris holding up so well among just Vietnamese voters?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Not sure I agree with the premise, but one underrated reason why Harris held up better in OC than demographics and neighboring Counties might suggests is because of the Vietnamese vote - it seems like she actually came pretty close to matching Biden's numbers in these precincts which is interesting given what happened nationally.

In 2020, the OC Vietnamese vote swung hard right, and was part of the reason the OC had a much smaller swing than one would expect given what was happening in Demographically similar counties around the Country.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

She didn't do that well. OC should have been Harris+5 minimum considering it's education level and the fact that California was her home state. But I get your point on why she did better there than SB or Riverside and that's mainly since it's a wealthier county with a higher % of college educated whites.

[有爭議嘅領土 of The Figgis Agency]

is there some sort of California Attorney General's Office thing from 2011 to 2016 thing that would explain Harris holding up so well among just Vietnamese voters?

I don't think it has anything to do with that. There's simply no more room for the GOP to gain further with West Coast Vietnamese Americans, as the original refugee generation continues to pass on while native-borns and more recent immigrants are broadly socialized into the D coalition.

But yes I agree with Arizona Iced Tea. Were it not for multiple pre-election CA state polls showing Biden/Harris tied in if not outright losing Orange County, I would've expected Harris to win Orange County by at least 5 points and CA-45 by more than she actually did OTL.

[He's turned to dust now, one of the chosen few]

https://twitter.com/politicsmaps/status/1864384632164102632

Kinda funny how hard the Challenger Deep-colored UCI campus is screaming at you on this map.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

She probably improved with rich educated whites.

[TDAS04]

Orange County trended Republican.

[ottermax]

I wonder if some of the Vietnamese population self-sorted - maybe some of the conservative ones moved to Houston? I'm really curious to compare Latino heavy urban/suburban precincts in places in California where there's been significant outmigration to places like Arizona, Nevada, and Texas - I have a theory the swings will be more extreme where political migration favored Republicans.

I also imagine Orange County is losing some of the people who would have favored the swing towards Trump. It's the most expensive county in Southern California for housing and I personally know multiple coworkers who've left for Texas or Nevada.

[RBH]

looking up the results from New Orleans precincts with high Asian (Vietnamese) populations

2020
Precinct 9/41A (65% Other): 103-75 Trump (57%)
Precinct 9/41C (62% Other): 143-99 Trump (59%)
Precinct 9/41D (56% Other): 124-81 Trump (60%)

2024
Precinct 9/41A (66% Other): 86-39 Trump (67%)
Precinct 9/41C (60% Other): 132-103 Trump (56%)
Precinct 9/41D (56% Other): 108-88 Trump (53%)

So take your pick on how that community swung

[有爭議嘅領土 of The Figgis Agency]

I wonder if some of the Vietnamese population self-sorted - maybe some of the conservative ones moved to Houston? I'm really curious to compare Latino heavy urban/suburban precincts in places in California where there's been significant outmigration to places like Arizona, Nevada, and Texas - I have a theory the swings will be more extreme where political migration favored Republicans.

I also imagine Orange County is losing some of the people who would have favored the swing towards Trump. It's the most expensive county in Southern California for housing and I personally know multiple coworkers who've left for Texas or Nevada.

Anecdotally I’ve heard there’s substantial youth drain of 2nd gen Vietnamese from Orange County to the Bay Area, the Texas Triangle, and the PNW, among other places. Less sure about Houston but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Vietnamese (or Chinese/Taiwanese for that matter) who relocate there from SoCal are more R than usual.

[The Ex-Factor]

I have been mulling the idea that Biden was a particularly bad candidate for Vietnamese Americans - at least in Orange County. He famously did very poorly in 2020 there compared to Hillary in 2016, but majority Vietnamese precincts swung heavily towards Newsom in the 2021 recall and Harris seems to have held up relatively well in places like Garden Grove and Westminster compared to 2020.

[wbrocks67]

Why are people being so black and white with this? Clearly the OP meant it in the context of this county shifting red like many others - but still shifting much *less* red than other comparable CA areas, which some moved like 10-15%.

[Sir Mohamed]

Trump isn't a good fit for OC. Many Romney-Clinton voters aren't ready to return to the MAGA GOP.

[ottermax]

I have been mulling the idea that Biden was a particularly bad candidate for Vietnamese Americans - at least in Orange County. He famously did very poorly in 2020 there compared to Hillary in 2016, but majority Vietnamese precincts swung heavily towards Newsom in the 2021 recall and Harris seems to have held up relatively well in places like Garden Grove and Westminster compared to 2020.

I also wonder if the Vietnamese community is reacting a bit to local politics. I think Westminster elected a MAGA Vietnamese city council that has been acting quite outrageously and there's been considerable local activism around the corruption and other issues related to these city councilmembers.

Additionally I think the socialism scare stuff in 2020 worked well to bring back older Vietnamese voters who probably still stuck with Trump this time, but unlike Cubans and Venezuelans I think there's more of a ceiling to how far this can go as most Vietnamese these days are relatively wealthy and educated relative to the Cuban and Venezuelan experience (I don't have statistics to support this, but just based on personal experiences). I imagine that you can only get so much support with populism with college educated wealthy immigrant communities until you hit a wall.

[RBH]

I have been mulling the idea that Biden was a particularly bad candidate for Vietnamese Americans - at least in Orange County. He famously did very poorly in 2020 there compared to Hillary in 2016, but majority Vietnamese precincts swung heavily towards Newsom in the 2021 recall and Harris seems to have held up relatively well in places like Garden Grove and Westminster compared to 2020.

Barring something unexpected, Biden will be the last major party nominee who was holding a federal office when the Vietnam War ended. While i'm guessing while Biden didn't do anything one way or another to stick out on Vietnam-related foreign policy, the fact that he had been around that long is certainly something

[有爭議嘅領土 of The Figgis Agency]

I have been mulling the idea that Biden was a particularly bad candidate for Vietnamese Americans - at least in Orange County. He famously did very poorly in 2020 there compared to Hillary in 2016, but majority Vietnamese precincts swung heavily towards Newsom in the 2021 recall and Harris seems to have held up relatively well in places like Garden Grove and Westminster compared to 2020.

Barring something unexpected, Biden will be the last major party nominee who was holding a federal office when the Vietnam War ended. While i'm guessing while Biden didn't do anything one way or another to stick out on Vietnam-related foreign policy, the fact that he had been around that long is certainly something

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/biden-second-chance/618586/

As I recently wrote, Biden has a relevant personal history. In April 1975, as a first-term senator, he was an outspoken opponent of using American money and risking Americans’ safety to rescue the tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who had bet their lives on American promises. “The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese,” he said in a Senate speech. President Gerald Ford tried to sway Biden by reminding him of the American tradition of welcoming refugees from war and oppression, but Biden was unmoved. Vietnam was a lost cause, and Americans wanted to forget.

[dkxdjy]

There were some recent scandals involving local R politicians, see Andrew Do and Harry Sidhu, stuff like this could catch up to the party, might be interesting to see if the swings in the areas they represented were particularly strong

[New World Man]

6% swing isn't holding up well.

[Cyrusman]

Trump isn't a good fit for OC. Many Romney-Clinton voters aren't ready to return to the MAGA GOP.

This is the answer. Steve Garvey for example won Orange County this year in the senate race.
Trump still did way better than he did in 2916 and 2020.