Donald Trump on 5 November expanded his coalition across the United States, and he did so even in deep-blue California.
While Kamala Harris unsurprisingly beat out Trump in the Golden State – receiving about 60% of the vote – the former president nonetheless pulled off a victory, winning eight counties that supported Joe Biden in 2020.
It may take years to fully understand the dynamics that contributed to the shift, but experts and political observers have so far pointed to the economy and diminished voter enthusiasm as key elements.
Notorious for taking weeks to fully tally the election results, California is still finishing up its count. With more than 1m ballots left to sort through, the results could change, but as of Friday evening, Trump appears to have flipped eight counties from voting Democrat to Republican in the presidential race: Butte, Merced, Stanislaus, Fresno, San Joaquin, Inyo, San Bernardino and Riverside.
The counties are concentrated in the state’s interior, from the Inland Empire east of Los Angeles to the agricultural heartland in the Central Valley. They’re generally more rural and not as progressive as population centers on the coast, and several are closely split between the parties while others are predominantly Democratic. Half of the counties backed a mix of Democrats and Republicans in US House races while one – Merced – supported a Democrat in its sole House contest.
More than 1 million people voted for Trump in those areas, which are home to almost 7 million people.
Polling by the Associated Press and Norc at the University of Chicago suggest that California voters saw the economy as the most important issue facing the country, ahead of immigration, the climate and abortion access.
It’s a trend seen across the country, said Mark Baldassare, the survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California, with voters feeling negatively about the economy and angry and dissatisfied at those currently in power.
Like in other parts of the US, Trump appears to have been able to win over a larger share of young and Latino voters than he did before – although advocacy groups disagree about precisely how significant his gains were. In California, a decisive majority of Latino voters cast their ballots for Harris. Still, Trump managed to increase his share of the vote in most Latino-majority counties in California, according to CalMatters, including Fresno and Riverside.
Perceptions of the economy played a major role in the shift, organizers have said. “The most potent driver in the election was economic discontent, expressed in president-elect Donald Trump’s gains with most demographics,” Clarissa Martínez de Castro, the UnidosUS vice-president of the Latino Vote Initiative, said in a statement, while emphasizing that most Latino voters backed Harris.
Meanwhile, it appears turnout in California dropped from 2020, particularly among those who vote infrequently, said Baldassare.
“That suggests that the more infrequent voters probably didn’t make it [and] didn’t feel motivated as they did in 2020, which of course was during the pandemic and a time of considerable political angst,” he said.
Low-propensity voters that did make it to the polls may have been more motivated by the economy, Baldassare added.
“That meant some people were voting for change in large enough numbers,” he said.
Lisa Pruitt, a rural law expert at the University of California, Davis, said the results suggest some Californians believe the state’s policies have ventured too far left. Along with Trump’s gains, the state’s voters backed a measure to enact harsher penalties for theft and drug offenses, and rejected an effort to ban forced labor in prisons. Progressive district attorneys in Los Angeles and Oakland lost their seats.
“I think a lot of Californians think the state has moved too far to the left on crime, on so-called law and order – issues. And they are seeking a correction,” she said, adding that trans rights has also become a wedge issue for some voters.
A state law banning school districts from requiring parental notification if a child makes changes to their gender identification has attracted fierce backlash in conservative parts of the state and drawn national attention.
“California is a bellwether of progressive politics and we are seeing a recoiling from that in our own state,” Pruitt said.
But Trump’s victory in the US more broadly is part of a pattern that can be seen across the world, said James Adams, a political science professor at the University of California, Davis. Governing parties across the west, from Portugal to Finland to Germany are being voted out, and populist candidates are gaining support, Adams said.
“The Republican party under Donald Trump is essentially a populist party with the message that the system is rigged and serves the interest of the rich and powerful and ignores ordinary people,” he said. “That message is one that seems to resonate across western democracies.”
High inflation has eroded support for governing parties and confidence in their abilities to manage the economy, he added.
Far northern California’s Butte county, which is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, went to Trump. In Chico, the largest city in the county, however, voters supported Harris at similar levels they did Biden in 2020 and progressives were close to gaining a majority on the city council not seen in years.
Addison Winslow, a progressive on Chico’s city council, attributes Trump’s gains to the Democratic party failing to acknowledge the economic realities for voters and put forward a candidate who people trust.
“The anecdotal info I get is not that people are more conservative or more racist now or more hostile to progressive policies, but [that] the Democratic party has failed to put forward any national figures that the public trusts,” said Winslow.
“What the Democrats have done is say, ‘Inflation isn’t that bad any more, the economy is actually really good,’” he said. “Maybe they can pull some economic indicators and say, ‘Look, I’m right’ but that just hasn’t been the personal experience of people.”
