Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation hits California, where legislative Democrats have just the right number of seats they need to maintain their vital supermajorities, but where the GOP is planning to go on the offensive. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new data sets; you can also find all of our calculations from 2016 and past cycles here.
California has been one of the nation’s most Democratic states for a while, and Donald Trump is doing nothing to change that. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried the Golden State 62-32, a stronger margin than even Barack Obama’s already dominant 60-37 win over Mitt Romney four years earlier. While Democrats were unable to dislodge any of California’s 14 GOP members of Congress, they were able to make critical gains in both legislative chambers. Team Blue picked up three Assembly seats, taking a 55-25 majority, while in the Senate, Democrats flipped a Southern California district, giving them 27 of the 40 seats in the chamber. The entire Assembly is up every two years. Odd-numbered Senate seats are up in presidential cycles, while even-numbered ones are up in midterm years.
Under California law, two-thirds support in each chamber is needed to pass any tax increases. Democrats have one seat more than they need for a supermajority in the Assembly, while they have the exact number necessary in the Senate. Last month, Democrats used their narrow supermajorities to pass a gas-tax increase in order to fund a $52 billion transportation plan, a vote the GOP is determined to make one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats regret soon.
Freshman state Sen. Josh Newman, who narrowly won a four-year term in Southern California’s SD-29 last year, backed the bill: Newman was the deciding vote after Democrat Steve Glazer, who represents a very blue Bay Area seat but won office with the support of big business by defeating a labor-backed candidate, voted no and termed-out GOP state Sen. Anthony Cannella voted yes. Conservative San Diego radio host Carl DeMaio, who lost a close 2012 bid for mayor and a tight 2014 congressional race, proceeded to launch a recall campaign against Newman.
If DeMaio and his allies can collect 63,593 valid signatures by Oct. 16, they will be able to hold a recall vote against Newman on the June 2018 primary ballot; if they act faster, they might even be able to put the recall on the ballot this November, where turnout will be lower. The effort is reportedly being funded in part by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, an anti-tax group, while Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is raising money to help Newman.
Newman’s SD-29, which includes Fullerton and Yorba Linda in Orange County and small portions of Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, shifted from a very tight 49.1-48.7 Romney win to a wide 53-41 Clinton victory. Newman himself won an expensive campaign against GOP Assemblymember Ling-Ling Chang by just a 50.4-49.6 margin, so he doesn’t have much room for error, but Clinton’s strong showing hopefully offers something of a cushion.
Three other Senate seats flipped from Romney to Clinton (no seats went from Obama to Trump), and two of them were also up in 2016, but Republicans decisively held both. Romney carried Orange County’s SD-37 54-44, but Clinton took it 50-44. This seat hosted a special election in 2015, but Democrats didn’t even field a candidate. Republican John Moorlach won that race, and last year, he defeated his Democratic foe 57-43 even as Clinton was taking the seat.
In SD-21, which is located in northern Los Angeles County and stretches into San Bernardino County, Republican Assemblyman Scott Wilk won 53-47 as his district went from 50-48 Romney to 49-46 Clinton. Meanwhile, the one Romney/Clinton seat up in 2018 is SD-36, which includes parts of the coasts of Orange and San Diego Counties. This district flipped from 55-43 Romney to 48-46 Clinton; Republican incumbent Patricia Bates, who is the chamber’s minority leader, won her first term 66-34 in 2014.
The good news for Senate Democrats is that, even as Republicans target Newman, they have the chance to go on the offensive in 2018. Three Obama/Clinton GOP-held seats will be on the ballot, which could allow Democrats to keep their two-thirds Senate supermajority without Newman’s seat. On paper, all three look like solid Democratic pickup opportunities, since Clinton won each seat by at least a 20-point margin. However, none of the three districts are gimmes by any means.
The best Democratic target may be SD-12 where Anthony Cannella, who was the one Republican who backed the gas tax, is termed out. Clinton carried this seat, which includes part of the rural Central Valley, by a 57-37 margin, close to Obama’s 58-40 margin. However, Democrats have had a very challenging time turning out voters in the Central Valley when there isn’t a presidential election on the ballot. With Trump in the White House things may be different in 2018 than they were in 2010 and 2014, but nothing’s assured. And if Team Red knocks off Newman and holds all their seats, Democrats will have an extremely tough time finding another GOP vote for a tax increase. It doesn’t help that Glazer, the one Democrat to vote no on the gas tax, isn’t up until 2020.
The other two Clinton-Obama GOP-held seats both are held by incumbents who also won’t be easy to beat in 2018. Republican Andy Vidak’s SD-14, which is also in the Central Valley and includes part of Fresno and Bakersfield, went from 58-40 Obama to 59-36 Clinton. But Vidak won a narrow 52-48 victory in a 2013 special election and held his seat 54-46 the next year. Like Cannella’s SD-12, this is an area where Democrats struggle to turn out voters in non-presidential years, though again, Trump could disrupt this pattern.
Finally, Orange County Republican Janet Nguyen is defending SD-34, which includes parts of Anaheim, Garden Grove, and Santa Ana; Nguyen won her seat 58-42 in the 2014 GOP wave. The good news for Democrats is that SD-34 went from 53-44 Obama all the way to 59-36 Clinton. The bad news is that not only does Team Blue also need to worry about midterm turnout here, a blunder by Senate Democrats only helped to elevate Nguyen’s profile a few months ago.
Nguyen, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from the Vietnam War, made headlines after she spoke out against the late Tom Hayden’s opposition to the war on the Senate floor. The presiding Democratic senator had security remove Nguyen from the chamber on the grounds that she had violated the chamber’s rules by criticizing a former fellow member. (Hayden, best known as a radical 60s activist, had served in the Senate in the 90s.) While Democratic Senate leader Kevin de Leon quickly apologized, the incident made Nguyen a hero to Golden State Republicans and earned her favorable coverage in a seat with a large Vietnamese electorate.
We’ll turn next to the Assembly. To help follow along, Stephen Wolf has created an interactive map where each seat is colored based on whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump won it, and whether the seat is held by a Republican or a Democrat. As we above, Democrats hold a 55-25 majority, one seat over the critical two-thirds line, and the whole chamber is up every two years.
Clinton carried 66 Assembly seats, holding onto all 58 Obama districts while taking eight Romney seats. However, Republicans hold all the Romney/Clinton seats, as well as three Obama/Clinton districts. The bluest GOP-held Assembly seat, based on the 2016 presidential results, is AD-16 in Northern California, which includes Walnut Creek, Livermore, and Pleasanton. Obama won this seat 58-40, but two years later, Catharine Baker won a close race to become the only Republican to represent the San Francisco Bay Area in some time. Clinton then won the same seat in a 64-29 landslide, but Baker hung on for a second term by 56-44 margin.
Meanwhile, the seat that saw the biggest net swing to the left was AD-77, located around San Diego. However, while this district from 50-48 Romney to 55-39 Clinton, GOP Assemblyman Brian Maienschein won re-election 58-42.
Amazingly, Clinton carried every single Democratic-held seat by at least a 10-point margin. Her weakest showing in a Democratic-held district was in Southern California’s AD-60, located around Corona in Riverside County. This seat went from 51-46 Obama to 52-42 Clinton, and Democrat Sabrina Cervantes unseated Republican incumbent Eric Linder 54-46.
However, there are a few Democrats worth watching in 2014. Sharon Quirk-Silva and Al Muratsuchi both first won their seats in 2012, were unseated in the 2014 GOP wave, and won them back in 2016. Quirk-Silva’s AD-65, which includes Fullerton and Buena Park in Orange County, went from 52-46 Obama to 57-37 Clinton. In 2014, Republican Young Kim beat Quirk-Silva 55-45; last year, the Democrat won their rematch 53-47.
In the coastal AD-66, which is home to Torrance and Manhattan Beach, Muratsuchi lost to Republican David Hadley 50.3-49.7 in 2014. Last year, as this seat went from 54-43 Obama to 60-34 Clinton, Muratsuchi beat Hadley 54-46. 2018 will likely be better for Democrats than 2014 was, but this is all a good reminder that so many of these California seats have been a lot less friendly to Team Blue in midterm years than they have in presidential cycles.