SAN JOSE, CA — With a staggering number of Californians registered to vote on Election Day Tuesday, Democrats are dwarfing any other party affiliation as national and local political pundits have predicted. But this year’s “no party” preference saw the highest jump (4.23 percent) since 2014.
The 19.6 million people in the state represents a high 78.16 percent eligible citizens, the highest percentage of eligible citizens registered heading in a gubernatorial election since 1950, the California Secretary of State’s Office reported.
Of that, 8.5 million are registered as Democrats, almost twice as much as the Republican party — which is down compared to 2014 by 4 percent. That’s about the same percentage of the increase in those registered with no party affiliation, with 5.4 million awaiting to be cast.
“It is nearly unprecedented for California to set a voter registration record in a midterm election,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said.
The Silicon Valley mostly matched the state’s breakdown, with San Mateo County registering 78.68 percent and Santa Clara’s coming in at 73.29 percent. For the former, Democrats represent half of those registered while overwhelming the number of Republicans by three times. For the latter, Santa Clara’s 403,587 Democrats dominates the GOP’s 152,914.
The Democrats’ surge may come as no surprise to San Jose State University Political Science Professor James Brent. First, it’s predictable based on history.
“The president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterm elections,” Brent told Patch. “Given 2016, I’m hesitant to predict anything. But my gut feeling is Democrats are probably going to do well, and they would anyway, but my feeling is they’ll do better than expected rather than worse. Hardly does one party win in three elections, and Republicans have won the last two.”
Where things may get tricky for Democrats is the Senate. They stand to lose more.
“The electoral map is so awful for them,” Brent added.
The professor turned to a flood of early voting enthusiasm as a guide to how the pendulum may swing.
“When early voting is up, and you think about who’s going to turn out, the pattern holds (as an advantage) for the opposition party,” he said, referring to the party not in power.
“Democrats are so anti-Trump, they’ve been chompin’ at the bit for this for two years,” he said. “And keep in mind, Trump lost the popular vote (in the 2016 presidential election).” U.S. President Donald Trump won on the Electoral College.
If the prediction about the victor comes true, then what?
“You may see Democrats in this time of prosperity build on our infrastructure, instead of just squandering the win,” he said. Trump campaigned on this issue, but it’s unclear whether the two parties can work together in these particularly polar times.
Brent also wanted to remind people that these aren’t our most polar times. Take the Civil War. However, in contemporary times, the United States is faced with a big cultural question that goes well beyond our politics given the last two years of observed cases of extreme nationalism that has all but labeled immigrants as outcasts.
“We need to ask ourselves: ‘Do we live in a culture that supports or do we live in a culture that marginalizes?'” he said.
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–Images via Shutterstock, San Jose State University
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