The Story of California
Good morning all.
I have been playing with this interactive graphic:
and it reminded me of watching California change from a fairly reliable Republican state to a very reliable Democratic one:
(excuse my clumsy image stitching skills)
So what happened between 1984 and 1992? This was a lot of it:
(California Demographic Research Unit, Department of Finance 2012)
Those of us who were living in California in 1994 remember Proposition 187, aka the “Save Our State” initiative:
It was a stringent crackdown on immigration (later ruled illegal). I a spasm of lizard-brain fear, it won the governorship for Pete Wilson. But it was all downhill from there for Republicans in California.
Back to the interactive graphic. I won’t put together an image for New Mexico - suffice it to say that it is similar to California, though later and not as dramatic. Arizona is still solidly red, but the margins are smaller than they used to be, and I predict that it will go blue by 2016.
To me, this is the final step in the reaction to what happened to the South after Johnson and civil rights. Other than Carter (from Georgia), it just got redder and redder, becoming a big advantage for Republicans electorally. The Northeastern states reacted to that by turning bluer, and the Republican advantage declined. And now with the trend in states with growing latino populations, I see the advantage moving to the Democrats. I don’t see how the Republicans climb out of this hole unless they are willing to change their attitudes towards race and immigration.