Republican California Popularity

The current California meme is that the Republican Party has adopted an extreme racist agenda and that’s why they’re unpopular now. As we looked at earlier, Republicans generally get around 42-45% of the vote statewide. That’s not good, but you can’t claim an inability to get 33% of the state senate seats on a lack of popularity. Based on how popular Republicans are, the party shouldn’t get that few.

But has it moved to the “extreme right?”


Registration
Below are party registration statistics going back to 1972. The real story is actually how dramatically people are leaving both parties to become Decline to State, but that’s another post.

What we see here is that a 13 point registration gap is hardly unprecedented. It was much higher in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. In fact, since 1972 Democrats have lost 12% of the registration, while Republicans lost 6%. The high point of Republican registration was 1990, when the party had 39% of the registration, but still a 10% gap. In 2006, the registration share in both parties had dropped and the gap was at its lowest, 8%. So if the Republican Party moved to an extreme right wing agenda it happened very recently or California likes the extreme agenda.

Of course, in 2008 Democratic registration went up 2% and Republican registration went down 3%. That was pretty much the same in 2010, with small declines by both parties as people continue to move to decline to state.

In 2008, George W. Bush and the Republican Party were very unpopular, while the Democrats did a big registration drive for their exciting new candidate, Barack Obama. This jump had more to do with the GOP’s failure and the Democratic excitement than any analysis of an agenda. Some of those people remain conservative, but feel the GOP moved too far to the left on spending. The agenda wasn’t “extreme” enough for them.

You can’t use one year with extraordinary circumstances and say conclusively what it means. The best you can say that in 2010, a year of Republican resurgence nationwide, the Republican Party didn’t see a registration bump. So it’s possible that some people are turned off by the Republican agenda, but if they are the turn off is very recent. It’s not like the Republican pledge not to raise taxes is something new.


The Results
Below are the results for eight statewide races since 1990. When a senate race was in an off year it was assigned to the year two years ahead. The third party vote is eliminated so that Republican v. Democrat can be compared on the same basis.

The years 1990, 1998, 2002, and 2006 were fairly consistent, with Republicans getting between 44.3% and 46.0% of the vote. So GOP popularity at the polls remained fairly constant. Nationwide 1994 was a banner year for the GOP and was so here too.

Two thousand ten, however, marked the first real change in voting patterns. Democratic voting share jumped 3%. Of course one election isn’t enough data to prove anything substantially, but if it is a sign that Republicans are becoming unpopular in the state it’s a recent phenomenon, not one that’s been happening over time.