Independents outnumber GOP in blue California

Voters increasingly shun major parties in favor of having no affiliation

“Republican” has slipped to the third-most popular party affiliation — after no party at all — in Democrat-dominated California, marking a troubling milestone for the GOP in the nation’s most populous state that a generation ago was home to the Reagan Revolution.

Political Data Inc., which compiles figures from county election offices, reported this week that 4.84 million of California’s 19 million voters declared they had no party preference while 4.77 million had registered as Republican at the close of registration for the June 5 primary. Democratic party registration ticked up to 8.44 million, while voters regis-

tering with other parties totaled just under 1 million.

“The fact is, no party preference has been growing as a share for the electorate for the past many years,” said Political Data Vice President Paul Mitchell.

Like many who are shunning party registration, Ben Johnson, 56, of Berkeley feels that both Democrats and Republicans are too beholden to special-interest groups that bankroll their campaigns rather than the needs of regular voters. He was happy to hear unaffiliated voters like himself are gaining ground.

“Both Democrats and Republicans are puppets of corporations,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to overthrow all of them.”

The California Secretary of State’s office will release its official numbers Friday, and spokesman Sam Mahood said he would reserve comment until then.

Matt Fleming, communications director for the California Republican Party, said the milestone “isn’t surprising.” But he said the rise of no-party registration “suggests that voters are fed up with the status quo in California, which, by any objective measure, is Democrat control of Sacramento.”

“Voters have been becoming more and more independent for years,” Fleming said. “But no party preference doesn’t mean voters are becoming Democrats, and we will continue to reach out to all voters.”

The California Democratic Party had no comment. Democratic registration went up by nearly 400,000 voters since 2016, but slipped in percentage of overall voters.

California, Mitchell noted, is not the first state in which voters choosing no party affiliation have overtaken Republicans, though national comparisons are tricky because many states don’t register voters by party. Unaffiliated voters overtook Republicans in North Carolina last September.

Mitchell added that registration numbers don’t necessarily translate to results at the polls. Republican Donald Trump won North Carolina in the November 2016 presidential election while California went for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The growth in no-party registration trend hasn’t all come at the expense of Republicans, Mitchell said. Many of the young voters claiming no party affiliation seem politically progressive, but haven’t aligned with the Democrats, he said.

Still, the milestone is remarkable for the Grand Old Party in California where Ronald Reagan’s Republican conservatism — cutting taxes and regulation, boosting military and police — won him two terms in the governor’s mansion from 1967 to 1975 and two in the White House from 1981 to 1989.

The last Republican presidential candidate to win California was George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president, in 1988. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was among the last Republicans to win statewide office in California with his 2006 re-election.

Schwarzenegger, first elected with the 2003 recall of former Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat whose polls fell following an unpopular vehicle license fee and rolling blackouts in the state’s newly deregulated electricity market, has criticized his party as out of step with California voters.

“Today we are the Titanic, after it hit the iceberg, but before the last bit of the ship submerged,” Schwarzenegger, who has supported Democratic environmental initiatives, said in March. “But unlike the Titanic, we might be able to save Leonardo DiCaprio before he goes under.”

Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen said the GOP’s Golden State woes stem from an identity crisis. The national party platform is well to the right on issues like environmental regulation, immigration enforcement and gay rights for many Californians who otherwise identify with its fiscal conservatism, support for law enforcement and a strong national defense.

“What have Republicans done in the last 20 years to alienate voters? The answer lies not so much in what California Republicans have done, but the national party writ large,” Whalen said. “Schwarzenegger did not govern as a conservative Republican.”

Some prominent California Republicans — including Steve Poizner — have since dropped the GOP for no party affiliation. Poizner, the former Silicon Valley tech executive and former state insurance commissioner, is along with Schwarzenegger the last to win statewide office as a Republican.

But Poizner, who lost a 2010 Republican primary for governor to former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson for president instead of Trump in 2016. Earlier this year, Poizner changed his registration to no party preference as he attempts a return to his old insurance commissioner post, and said he regretted his 2010 campaign in which he called for cracking down on illegal immigrants for its “divisive tone.”