How did Ronald Reagan do so well in Los Angels County?

[Cyrusman]

He carried LA County both times which is unprecedented for a Republican. I get he was from California but this is LA County we’re talking about not San Diego, or Orange. They won’t just embrace someone who was known to start the rise of conservatism just cause he’s from that state. Gerald ford and George H.W who both won California lost LA County.

[MIKESOWELL]

I know that this doesn't necessarily correspond to every state, but Reagan won two thirds of the white vote nationwide. I don't know the exit polling in California, but I would assume that Reagan got about 59 percent of the white vote in California, compared to maybe 53 percent or so for Bush. This would partially explain why Reagan carried Los Angeles by ten points both times, but Bush lost it by a considerable margin.

[McNukes™ #NYCMMWasAHero]

Ronald Reagan won minority-majority Hawaii; it stands to reason that he also won the minority population somehow, at least with large enough margins to matter, and I'm curious how exactly he did this myself. We could use some productive outreach like Reagan.

[Mr. Smith]

He was from there, and LA County was barely Democratic back then.

Also, Humphrey did not carry LA County in '68, and if he had, he would have carried the state and likely carried NJ and IL to defeat Nixon.

[OSR stands with Israel]

LA County was just a Lean D county then relative to the nation

[Matty]

It's pretty obvious looking at certain county results that RR won hispanics.

[Del Tachi]

He carried LA County both times which is unprecedented for a Republican. I get he was from California but this is LA County we’re talking about not San Diego, or Orange. They won’t just embrace someone who was known to start the rise of conservatism just cause he’s from that state. Gerald ford and George H.W who both won California lost LA County.

As has been pointed out, Nixon won Los Angeles County in 1968 and 1972.  Eisenhower won it in 1952 and 1956; Dewey only barely lost in 1948.  LA County had an uninterrupted streak as a national bellweather between 1920 and 1984.  It didn't become a Safe D county until the 1990s.

[Del Tachi]

It's pretty obvious looking at certain county results that RR won hispanics.

Which counties?  Exit polls had Reagan losing the Hispanic vote in both 1980 and 1984.

I think Atlas is (once again) underestimating the amount of demographic transformation that's happened in a lot of urban/suburban counties over the past 30 years.  Los Angeles County was 40.8% non-Hispanic White in 1990, but only 26.5% non-Hispanic White by 2017. 

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

It's pretty obvious looking at certain county results that RR won hispanics.

Which counties?  Exit polls had Reagan losing the Hispanic vote in both 1980 and 1984.

I think Atlas is (once again) underestimating the amount of demographic transformation that's happened in a lot of urban/suburban counties over the past 30 years.  Los Angeles County was 40.8% non-Hispanic White in 1990, but only 26.5% non-Hispanic White by 2017. 

Marty = ~100% of Atlas

[Sumner 1868]

He was literally a Hollywood elite. It was a friends-and-neighbors vote.

[UWS]

He was literally a Hollywood elite. It was a friends-and-neighbors vote.

And California is his home state.

[538Electoral]

He was very popular in CA.

[sg0508]

Hometown boy. In '88, CA was also the "final gift from Reagan".

[TDAS04]

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.

[Cyrusman]

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?

[TDAS04]

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'm guessing increased diversity, more minorities voting, Bill Clinton...

[kcguy]

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.

[Calthrina950]

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.

If I recall correctly, Goldwater "only" lost Los Angeles County by about 14% in 1964. He did better throughout all of Southern California than he did nationally, and won Orange and San Diego Counties outright (the former by double digits). Goldwater also ran ahead of his national average throughout the entire American Southwest, narrowly winning his home state of Arizona and getting over the 40% mark in New Mexico and Nevada (and losing Utah by slightly under 10%). Johnson, conversely, ran ahead of his national average throughout Northern California, particularly in many counties (i.e. Plumas) that were ancestrally Democratic, dating back to the days of the New Deal and even earlier.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Pasadena and Long Beach and Santa MONICA are part of LA county and are just like Evanston and Skokie which are part of Cook. They were conservative.

[Arbitrage1980]

California is a literally different state.

The most important change that allowed CA to become solid Dem, was the outflow of conservative whites in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War and the downsizing of the aerospace & defense industry. Those whites were replaced by liberal whites working in tech/media/entertainment. It's no accidenet that California's transformation began in the 90s. Second, demographic changes brought about by mass immigration, a terrible tragedy for the state and the country.

[AN63093]

It's pretty obvious looking at certain county results that RR won hispanics.

Which counties?  Exit polls had Reagan losing the Hispanic vote in both 1980 and 1984.

I think Atlas is (once again) underestimating the amount of demographic transformation that's happened in a lot of urban/suburban counties over the past 30 years.  Los Angeles County was 40.8% non-Hispanic White in 1990, but only 26.5% non-Hispanic White by 2017. 

This.  It has nothing to do with where Reagan was from, the "neighbors and friends" vote (seriously? LOL) or even the decline of the CA defense industry (while perhaps intertwined with these greater trends, and certainly worth mentioning, was not the primary factor).  All these other reasons are over-analyzing it and are varying degrees of irrelevant.

What changed were the demographics.  LA County today has practically no resemblence to what it looked like 40 years ago.

Take the Valley, for instance.  At the 1980 census, the Valley was over 70% white.  Places like Van Nuys were upwards of 80%+ white (Van Nuys by the 2000 census was 23% white.. by now, I imagine it's even less).

It's really just as simple as that.  The same thing is now happening in Orange Cty, although it took a couple decades longer for it to get going there.

[SingingAnalyst]

It's pretty obvious looking at certain county results that RR won hispanics.

Which counties?  Exit polls had Reagan losing the Hispanic vote in both 1980 and 1984.

I think Atlas is (once again) underestimating the amount of demographic transformation that's happened in a lot of urban/suburban counties over the past 30 years.  Los Angeles County was 40.8% non-Hispanic White in 1990, but only 26.5% non-Hispanic White by 2017.  

This.  It has nothing to do with where Reagan was from, the "neighbors and friends" vote (seriously? LOL) or even the decline of the CA defense industry (while perhaps intertwined with these greater trends, and certainly worth mentioning, was not the primary factor).  All these other reasons are over-analyzing it and are varying degrees of irrelevant.

What changed were the demographics.  LA County today has practically no resemblence to what it looked like 40 years ago.

Take the Valley, for instance.  At the 1980 census, the Valley was over 70% white.  Places like Van Nuys were upwards of 80%+ white (Van Nuys by the 2000 census was 23% white.. by now, I imagine it's even less).

It's really just as simple as that.  The same thing is now happening in Orange Cty, although it took a couple decades longer for it to get going there.

Changing demographics is most if not 90% of it. Detroit's 5th district voted 54-33 Humphrey in '68, narrowly for Ford in '76, and 95.0-4.2 for Gore in 2000. Why? Demographic changes (massive out-migration to Sterling Heights, mostly).

However, since Carter carried LA County in '76, I wonder if some older Angelenos (long gone now) recalled Reagan's Hollywood days and voted for the old actor in '80 and even '84.

[Intell]

The upper class was always a republican constituency but Reagan got astronomical numbers amongst middle class whites. White ethnics in the past that had been democratic swung heavily to Reagan. White ethnics, started to vote of their economic background rather than being more democratic. This allowed Reagan to win LA county.

[AN63093]

It's pretty obvious looking at certain county results that RR won hispanics.

Which counties?  Exit polls had Reagan losing the Hispanic vote in both 1980 and 1984.

I think Atlas is (once again) underestimating the amount of demographic transformation that's happened in a lot of urban/suburban counties over the past 30 years.  Los Angeles County was 40.8% non-Hispanic White in 1990, but only 26.5% non-Hispanic White by 2017.  

This.  It has nothing to do with where Reagan was from, the "neighbors and friends" vote (seriously? LOL) or even the decline of the CA defense industry (while perhaps intertwined with these greater trends, and certainly worth mentioning, was not the primary factor).  All these other reasons are over-analyzing it and are varying degrees of irrelevant.

What changed were the demographics.  LA County today has practically no resemblence to what it looked like 40 years ago.

Take the Valley, for instance.  At the 1980 census, the Valley was over 70% white.  Places like Van Nuys were upwards of 80%+ white (Van Nuys by the 2000 census was 23% white.. by now, I imagine it's even less).

It's really just as simple as that.  The same thing is now happening in Orange Cty, although it took a couple decades longer for it to get going there.

Changing demographics is most if not 90% of it. Detroit's 5th district voted 54-33 Humphrey in '68, narrowly for Ford in '76, and 95.0-4.2 for Gore in 2000. Why? Demographic changes (massive out-migration to Sterling Heights, mostly).

However, since Carter carried LA County in '76, I wonder if some older Angelenos (long gone now) recalled Reagan's Hollywood days and voted for the old actor in '80 and even '84.

I suppose some of those voters could exist, but it would be pretty much impossible to figure out how many, and I'm not sure it would be a significant number anyways.  Mostly because I'm not sure you can draw any conclusions specific to LA County in regards to 1976 vs. 1980- Carter '76 was the last time the Dems were competitive nationally with whites and actually came close to winning a majority.  Every election since then the GOP has won whites fairly resoundingly, although Clinton '96 came close to a plurality (and we'll never know what would've happened if Perot wasn't in the race, since he got 9% of the white vote that year).  So I think LA County just reflects how demographic voting trends were changing nationally rather than anything specific to LA County.  Had Reagan never ran, the same shift would've happened in the 80s- maybe the margins would be a little different, but it still would've happened.