GOP loses grip on bastion of Orange County
In a new bit of the continuing flood of bad news for California Republicans, Democrats are now the leading party in Orange County, the storied home of the Reagan Revolution and longtime stronghold for the GOP.
According to numbers from the Orange County registrar’s office, as of Wednesday there were 89 more Democrats registered in the county than Republicans, marking the first time since 1978 that the GOP has trailed its political rival.
Democratic leaders were quick to boast about turning the county blue, or at least blueish.
“Republicans’ ‘Orange Curtain’ is in tatters at the feet of Democrats’ sustained grassroots organizing,” Andy Orellana of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee said in an email.
The change is more about bragging rights than any actual shift at the ballot box. After flipping four GOP House districts last year, Democrats already hold every Orange County congressional seat and half the county’s seats in the Legislature. And they’re looking to up that number in 2020.
Times have changed, but that doesn’t mean they won’t change back, said Fred Whitaker, chair of the Republican Party of Orange County.
“Orange County is still a conservative county but it’s now a purple county,” he said in an email. “It’s now a fight for the No Party Preference voters who have grown exponentially throughout the state recently and Orange County isn’t immune to that trend. It just hit us later than the rest of the state.”
But while the number of unaffiliated voters has soared, both in Orange County and across the state, that doesn’t account for all of the county GOP’s problems.
In 1994, 53% of Orange County voters were Republicans, compared with the 34% who were Democrats. Since then, there’s been a steady slide in GOP registration, while the Democrats stayed pretty much the same.
“Democrats have been winning by not losing, and not only in Orange County,” said Paul Mitchell of Political Data, which provides voter information to political groups and campaigns. “Their registration has been pretty steady for the past 20 years, while independents have risen and Republicans have dropped.”
Ten years ago, Republicans made up 44% of county voters, with 32% of the voters Democrats and 20% independent. That gave Republicans 187,867 more voters than Democrats.
But while independent voters now make up 27% of those registered, Democratic registration has risen in that decade to 34%, even as GOP numbers have skidded to 34%, erasing their edge.
Whitaker tried to put the best spin on the numbers, saying that since the percentages for Democrats haven’t changed much over the years, “voters aren’t running out to join the Democrat Party . ... We still hold voter registration advantages in the seats we are focused on in the next election.”
Republicans are fighting not only against Democrats, but also against demographics. In recent years, many of the newest voters have been ethnic minorities such as Latinos and Asians, along with many young people. All are groups that are much more likely to support Democrats.
“The growing Latino population has been alienated by Trump,” said Mitchell. “And younger Asian voters are among the most liberal in the state.”
In politics, demographics can be destiny. In 2016, Orange County voters backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, 51%42%. It marked the first time the county had gone Democratic since Franklin Roosevelt won in 1936.