texas going dem and California going red

[Virginiá]

Texas could go Democratic sometime in the 2020s (probably mid-late), but California? I mean never say never in politics, but it's going to take generations to undo the kind of entrenched support Democrats have built in that state. Observe this image I posted in another thread some time ago:




Compared to Texas, where Democrats are a rising political force:




Californians aren't just moderately Democratic. GenX/Millennials in that state are Democratic at levels nearing the Republican-leanings of Southern whites. Boomers are pretty Democratic themselves and the 65+ crowd only recently flipped (and bigly at that).

I don't know when it'll flip, but with that kind of support and knowing the trends of CA/minorities,  it'll take literal generations at least, absent some new great depression with a Democratic Hoover.

[Virginiá]

I'm surprised by the lack of a major age gap in California. Pretty much all age groups are solidly Democratic.

The 65+ age group actually voted 52-48 Romney, and in 2008 it went even bigger for Obama than it did Clinton (62-38 O). The GOP's influence among that generation of CA voters doesn't appear to be very strong, and I imagine for at least the next decade it could remain sort of swingy, depending on how Trump's presidency works out.

[Virginiá]

What I don't understand is why Republicans have so many members of Congress out of California?  I haven't actually looked closely but when you look at the map generally, Hillary won pretty much everywhere.  That delegation should be 90% Dem.  This seems like one of the main reasons Dems don't have the house.  Republicans probably have a higher percentage of seats in some swing states than Dems do in F'ing California.

Presidential trends sometimes take a while to trickle downballot, especially when you have incumbents hanging around that can hold their own. For instance, Valadao has won by landslide margins over the past 3 elections despite almost every other Democrat (Gov, Senate, Pres) winning his district - often by comfortable or double digit margins. It's interesting because his district is absurdly Hispanic (70%+), and CA Hispanics are quite Democratic. I'd love to see exit polls for some of these districts.

It's also worth noting that some of these seats only seemed to truly come around for Democrats during the Obama years, which as we all know has been a curse on downballot Democrats. It's likely that us holding the White House with an incumbent often somewhat unpopular has inhibited our ability to move on some of these areas. I suspect things will change a good bit now that there is an incumbent GOP president in office that is absolutely hated by California.

So, in my opinion, a number of these seats will go to a Democrat either when a strong enough wave hits (CA may be ripe in 2018, national wave or not), or whenever these incumbents retire.

[Virginiá]

Lets assume a semi-moderate wave hits in 2018 (which I think is more likely than not)... how many California districts do you think will swing to democrats?  Given Republican gerrymandering across the country, it is absolutely crucial that Democrats make gains in California. 

In a moderate wave, CA-10, CA-25, and CA-49 seem like the most likely to fall, assuming decent recruits. CA-21 would be up there too if Dems got Rudy Salas to run (he even won Kings County this year in his AD race, which Hillary couldn't even pull off). CA-39, CA-45, and CA-48 would all probably require retirements or a 2010-style wave, and their chances of falling I'd say are roughly in that order. D's have a strong bench in CA-39 (Newman and Quirk-Silva), but not really many people of stature in the other two OC districts. Just a few city councilmembers.

PNM got to this first literally while I was writing my post. His is much more detailed, but I largely agree at least with the first 4 seats he mentioned and I don't know enough about the rest. For 10, 25 and 49, I'd honestly be surprised if they didn't flip, given the ways things are going so far. My reasoning:

If Trump/Republicans continue on this current path/agenda, I personally believe brand damage is inevitable. Incumbent WH parties generally do poorly in midterms even when the incumbent president isn't that unliked, so imagine 2 more years of this behavior/policies from Trump? It might not be negative everywhere, but it's toxic in California.

Part of me believes that Hillary's unpopularity, Trump's absurdity during the campaign and Hillary's efforts to separate him from Republicans helped the GOP brand remain viable for downballot candidates last year, but after 2 years people will almost surely fully associate Trump with the Republican Party, as he is their leader now, regardless of his behavior. Their party now has to take responsibility for his actions and the agenda they are pushing. It's going to alienate people. Even without Trump's incompetent and awful shenanigans, many parts of the GOP agenda were already unpopular with voters.

The reason I pointed that^ out was that additional brand damage will hurt those CA Republicans and help Democrats make up for the turnout drop among minorities/young people.