The cobalt blue of California's electoral map masks conflicting hues of political ideology, and Tuesday's election results were an emphatic reminder. Barack Obama won the biggest victory in modern state history, smashing the record set in 1964 in Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide election, but not a single Republican member of Congress was defeated.
Voters sided with animal-rights activists, but not with proponents of gay marriage. They narrowly are supporting a redistricting measure backed by the Republican governor, and opposed a measure he endorsed to inform parents of a minor's abortion.
Those unpredictable decisions by voters, however, were accompaniments to the election's main theme: the demographic and ideological shifts that have delivered the state into Democratic hands and demonstrated anew the tough road ahead for the Republican minority.
In growth areas such as Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where the GOP once planned to mount a statewide resurgence, the Democratic nominee it derided as a far-left liberal and socialist was winning, the beneficiary of the fractured local economy.
There and in the other key electoral counties in California, including the most populous ones, Democrats performed better than their registration levels would indicate. In Los Angeles County, where Democrats hold a 28 percentage-point edge, Obama was winning by 40 points. In San Francisco, where Democrats hold a 47-point margin, he was winning by 70 points.
Moreover, Democrats were building on furious registration gains won in the run-up to the party's competitive primary and increased during the nationally enthralling general election.
In 24 of California's 58 counties, Democrats held the registration advantage in the 2004 presidential contest. They have bigger margins now in 21. In the 31 counties where Republicans outnumbered Democrats, their margins have slumped in 20 and grown in only four. In three counties, including San Bernardino, control has flipped from Republican to Democratic over the four years.
"You can't argue with some of the numbers," said state GOP Vice Chairman Thomas G. Del Beccaro, who nonetheless insisted that Democratic gains were cyclical and may be reversed if Obama were to prove less popular as president than he was as a candidate.
"There are still a number of issues on which Californians have rather conservative views and the successful party going forward needs to tap into those views," he said.
