How did McGovern win Redding?
The far northern Sacramento Valley (and points north of that) used to be very strongly Democratic, although I haven't figured out why. Take a look at Pat Brown's win over Richard Nixon in 1962:
Brown won by 20 points in Shasta County while losing by eight points in Marin.
One good way of measuring partisan affiliation is by looking at
Lieutenant Governor elections; since the Lieutenant Governor has no responsibilities to speak of, the election comes down essentially to party preference. In the 1994 election, which Gray Davis won, you can still see the last vestiges of Democratic strength in the north:
Traditionally, California politics has been based in large part on the north-south divide, with the north voting Democratic and the south Republican. Nowadays, Southern California is more willing to vote Democratic (Obama almost won Orange County in 2008, of course), and much of the inland north votes Republican almost always, but the same divisions are still visible.
The California Democratic Party has traditionally been dominated by northerners; now that every statewide office is held by a Democrat, southerners are almost shut out of office. Of the two Senators, Boxer is from Marin and Feinstein from San Francisco, as are both Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom (Brown was also Mayor of Oakland). Among the other statewide elected officials, Harris is from San Francisco, Lockyer is from Oakland, Jones is from Sacramento, and Torlakson is from Contra Costa County; Bowen and Chiang are the only ones from Los Angeles (or, for that matter, anywhere south of the Bay Area).
