Los Angeles used to have the reputation of a conservative city. That changed in the 1960s and 1970s, much moreso in the 1990s. Goldwater performed better in LA County than he did nationally.
What caused the drastic change in the 90s?
I just spent ten minutes reading up on it, so here's a very shallow take on a subject I know very little about:
In the early 1990's, the California economy was hit hard by the national recession, combined with the post-Cold War contraction of a defense industry that was very prominent in LA County. Many former defense industry workers--who had helped to give much of LA County a suburban feel--left for jobs in other states.
Meanwhile, LA had become a refuge for those fleeing Communist takeovers and Islamic revolutions in their homelands, including Iranians, Salvadorans, and Vietnamese. These groups initially couldn't vote but many of them tended to favor the GOP's stance towards the governments they had fled.
In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson was faced with falling tax revenues and an unhappy electorate. Tax increases had been politically unpopular ever since the Prop 13 revolts of the late 1970's, so he hit upon the cost-saving plan of cutting services to illegal immigrants. After being considered certain to lose his re-election bid that year, he managed a narrow win.
As the 1990's progressed, the GOP took Pete Wilson's lesson and ran against undesirable immigrants at the national level, but many were less scrupulous than he had been in distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration. In the process, the GOP alienated not just the said Iranians/Salvadorans/Vietnamese but maybe even fifth-generation Chinese-Americans. It was a good tradeoff nationally for the GOP but a fatal wound for the party in California.
