So last night I brought up the question what happened to the Republican dominance in California for Presidential elections. Brad theorized that it was a demographic change that lead to Claifornia becoming a safe state for the Democratic Party in presidential elections. I expressed some doubt, but he may be right. Be low the cut is a graph I made of the popular vote totals in California for both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. For comparison I also graphed the popular vote totals for both parties nationally.
The Democratic part has been gaining steadily in the Golden State since about 1980, this did not translate into victories until 1992, but the trend is plain. What I found even more surprising was that the trend was mirrored, though delayed in the national vote totals. From 1952 through 2008 in general the Democratic Party has been gaining popular votes and the Republican Party has been bleeding them.
If this is demographics, then it could spell massive trouble for the Republican Party. The Tea Party revolution will be carrying the party into the wrong direction for electoral victory. Note that the Republicans did not lose votes totals, slipping behind the Democrats when the total losses became too great, but rather votes moved from the Republican ledger to the Democratic ledger. It is hardly likely that those migrating votes are of a Tea Party mentality. As such moving towards the Tea Party is unlikely to bring those votes back to the Republican party and is therefore unlikely to help in the long term electoral prospects of that party. (there may be short term swings such as 1964 or 1994 but the trend lines continue.)
Becoming a lite version of the Democratic pArty is no answer, rather the Republicans are faced with a generational challenge of finding a philosophical stance that agrees with their principles, and is flexible enough to sweep in votes from the growing Democratic wave.
