California Voter Registration: The California Secretary of State’s office has published updated voter registration statistics in advance of tomorrow’s vote, and boy, the trend line is pretty bleak for Republicans. Overall, statewide, Democrats have added over 750,000 voters to their ranks since 2012, while Republicans have lost just over 300,000 registered voters in the same time period. (Voters electing to express no party preference, whose ranks include many younger Hispanic voters, grew by nearly 1.3 million!)
We thought it might be a good idea to take a closer look at the registration changes in all seven Congressional Districts being contested by both parties this year, as well as in CA-39, where the ground appears to be shifting under GOP Rep. Ed Royce’s feet and could be a pick-up target in the future. You can view our full data here, but we’ve handily summarized the shifts in table format below:
District |
Year |
D% |
R% |
I% |
CA-07 (BERA) |
2012 |
39 |
38 |
19 |
|
2016 |
39 |
34 |
22 |
CA-10 (Denham) |
2012 |
40 |
39 |
17 |
|
2016 |
39 |
36 |
19 |
CA-21 (Valadao) |
2012 |
47 |
33 |
16 |
|
2016 |
46 |
29 |
21 |
CA-24 (open) |
2012 |
38 |
34 |
22 |
|
2016 |
40 |
32 |
23 |
CA-25 (Knight) |
2012 |
35 |
39 |
17 |
|
2016 |
38 |
35 |
22 |
CA-39 (Royce) |
2012 |
32 |
39 |
23 |
|
2016 |
34 |
36 |
25 |
CA-49 (Issa) |
2012 |
29 |
41 |
24 |
|
2016 |
31 |
38 |
26 |
CA-52 (Peters) |
2012 |
33 |
34 |
28 |
|
2016 |
34 |
31 |
29 |
The needle moved in the Democratic and independent direction in all eight of these districts. Perhaps the most dramatic change was in CA-25, a district located in the northern part of Los Angeles County, where a four-point Republican registration edge in 2012 has turned into a three-point Democratic advantage today. Those numbers certainly validate national Democrats’ substantial investment into Bryan Caforio’s bid to knock off freshman incumbent Rep. Steve Knight.
On the other side of the coin, Republicans have tried mightily to contest three Democratic-held seats (CA-07, CA-24, and, to a lesser degree, CA-52) this year, but the voter data illustrates exactly how challenging of a task this will be. In the 7th and 24th Districts, Democrats have expanded their net voter registration edges by roughly four points in each district, and by three points in the 52nd, where Democratic incumbent Scott Peters appears poised to earn a third term.
Overall, while the numbers may not necessarily point to a Republican apocalypse in the Golden State tomorrow, their long-term survival in key districts appears to be a dire proposition.