1968: Why did Humphrey lose Los Angeles County?

[Mr. Smith]

If he had won LA, he would've carried California against Nixon and likely won the popular vote, even with Illinois and NJ still tipping the map to Nixon.

I don't get it, JFK won it, Carter won it, it was Dukakis' only county in SoCal, I'm pretty sure evn Truman won it.

[TDAS04]

Johnson beat Goldwater in LA County by only 15 points, after JFK carried it by only 1.  Before the 1970s, Los Angeles had the reputation of a conservative, "Mid-American", WASP city.  SoCal overall was the land of "Sunbelt conservatism" back then.

[Arbitrage1980]

People forget how conservative SoCal used to be. The shift to the left began in the late 80's/early 90's, with the collapse of the aerospace and defense industry due to the Cold War, increased latino immigration, Pete Wilson's Prop 187, and Asians moving to the left.

[Blair]

I know that the Mayor of LA in 1968 was Sam Yorty, who was notoriously conservative and a walking trope of what conservative democrats represented in that era, and that as others have said that LA itself was relatively conservative around that time

[Hydera]

People forget how conservative SoCal used to be. The shift to the left began in the late 80's/early 90's, with the collapse of the aerospace and defense industry due to the Cold War, increased latino immigration, Pete Wilson's Prop 187, and Asians moving to the left.

Also suburban whites fled to other Socal counties and it took hispanics reaching voting age and non-voting hispanics that turned out for Obama/Hillary to turn those socal counties to the democratic party.