CA-GOP: "Call us the 'Party of Yes'. Also, vote 'no' on Gov. Brown's tax bill"

[Torie]

California used to have a lot of Tory Dems, and the GOP outpaced its registration figures like clockwork. Also class was more important in the partisan divide. The GOP did much better relatively speaking with absentee voters. The Tory Dems are now Pubs, or dead or elsewhere generally, the class differential has eroded away to almost nothing, along with the GOP margin with absentees, and independents/declined to states (the percentage of the pie they represent like most places has more than doubled) tend to at most be split and probably lean Dem, with a fair number not registered Dem because the Dems are not Left enough for them.

I remember as a junior high school student doing phone calls for a Pub right winger, Max Rafferty God help me, running against perhaps Alan Cranston, but I forget at the moment. About a quarter of the Dems that I called in the San Fernando Valley said they were going to vote for him. These days that number would be close to zero.

[All Along The Watchtower]

my question is why has the state shifted to the democrats so much at the presidential level? In my 1974 Almanac of American Politics, a full 56% of the voters were registered democrats. Now its down to 44%. The number of DTS voters has also increased from 7% in the 1970s to the current 26%.

One thing someone on redracinghorses said was that California democrats are much more partisan now then they were back then and that Reagan always enjoyed support in heavily democratic areas (by registration) such as Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, El Monte etc.

As Xahar said, partisan affiliation isn't particularly meaningful at the presidential level (just look at Oklahoma ) And yes, Reagan did well among the blue-collar white Democrats in places like the ones you mentioned-though it must be remembered, of course, that it was the white-collar middle and upper class areas of the state (Orange County being the classic example) that were historically always the most strongly Republican, and where the grassroots 'movement conservatives" of the Goldwater campaign (and later the Reagan campaign) were most concentrated.

Furthermore, the Reagan effect was real everywhere, but in California it masked the underlying trends towards the Democrats. Bush Sr kept CA in the GOP column in 88, but he was no match for the charismatic, culturally progressive, economically center-right reformist "New Democrat" Bill Clinton in 92-and those Third Way qualities played well in California.

Finally, demographic changes in the California electorate played a big role, of course. California's Democratic Party is very diverse, with so-called "gentry liberals", young professionals, blue-collar Latino workers, public sector employees, Silicon Valley executives, naturalized Asian immigrants, Hollywood executives, San Francisco bankers...all of these people find common cause with the Democratic Party. 

It helps the Democrats, btw, that both the California Republicans and the national Republicans have become increasingly right-wing, partisan, and ideologically rigid. As California becomes ever more diverse, cosmopolitan, and urban/metropolitan-focused, what plays well in more homogenous suburbs and exurbs of "Middle America" falls flat on its face here, politically speaking.