Californians voted very differently last week than in previous elections. Nine counties, including Orange, Fresno, San Bernardino, Merced, and Stanislaus, flipped to Trump, who received about 39 percent of California’s vote in 2024, compared to about 34 percent in 2020. There were also large voting changes in down-ballot races and state propositions, both of which demonstrate voter frustrations about quality-of-life issues within the state and increasing voter skepticism about the state’s political leadership.
Perhaps the most striking outcome was a nearly 70 percent approval of Proposition 36, which increases theft charges below $950 from a misdemeanor offense to felony charges for those with two previous drug convictions but drops charges if drug users plead guilty and complete a drug treatment program. This proposition passed overwhelmingly despite enormous resistance from Governor Gavin Newsom and many Democrats in the Legislative Assembly and state Senate who twice attempted to kill the proposition with their own legislation. Newsom and the state’s Democratic political leadership were widely criticized, including in this editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle:
Governor Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders really, really don’t want California voters to approve a November ballot measure to roll back parts of Proposition 47. … In fact, they’re so desperate to prevent the measure from succeeding that they’re willing to subvert and twist the very process they claim to revere more than anything else—democracy—to achieve their aims.
A likely reason why Newsom and the legislative supermajority didn’t want Proposition 36 to pass is because it will increase the number of people in state prisons, where incarceration costs nearly $133,000 per inmate annually. But out-of-control prison costs created by this very same political leadership are of course no reason to permit crime and drug abuse to continue.
Voter frustration over crime also led to the 23-point defeat of progressive Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, whose office responded to neighbor complaints about a Beverly Hills estate being occupied by criminal squatters by saying, “Squatters have rights too.” Voters also recalled progressive Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price by about 30 points. Price may not have been so progressive when it came to personal matters, allegedly demanding a $25,000 campaign contribution from a suspected felon and allegedly threatening her own employees if they participated in her recall campaign. All thirteen of her county’s law enforcement agencies supported her recall.
Voters also defeated Proposition 5, a ballot initiative that was not introduced by voters, but by the state Legislature. It would have changed the state constitution to require only 55 percent voter approval for local government bonds to finance affordable housing and public infrastructure, from its current two-thirds supermajority requirement. Bonds would have been repaid through higher property taxes. The outcome shows continued voter support for 1978’s Proposition 13 and demonstrates growing skepticism about governments’ ability to live within their remarkably generous budgets and build anything on time and at a reasonable cost.
As California voters are moving toward the center, some political leaders have not. Gavin Newsom called for a special legislative session next month to “Trump Proof” California, and state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who may be considering a run for governor in 2026, held a news conference
announcing he would “Protect California’s values, people, and natural resources ahead of a second Trump administration.”
Newsom and Bonta state they will protect California’s illegal migrants, which will require significantly increasing the budget of Bonta’s Department of Justice to fight deportations. But most Californians do not support such a policy. Sixty-two percent of Californians view the border as not secure, and 70 percent see undocumented migrants as a “burden” on Californians. And Hispanic voter views about illegal migration within this poll are not so different from those of non-Hispanic Whites.
Bonta and Newsom also want to retain California’s policies that reduce carbon emissions beyond what has been achieved in other states. But these reductions have come at significant costs, including the highest gasoline prices in the country, which will rise following last week’s decision by the California Air Resources Board to further reduce carbon emissions in the state’s unique gasoline blend. It is difficult to justify the policies that make California’s energy so expensive because greenhouse gas emissions are a global issue, and California is responsible for less than 1 percent of the global total. This suggests that the incremental climate benefits of California’s carbon policies are virtually zero.
The most striking change within California voting patterns was among Hispanic voters, who voted for Biden in 2020 over Trump by about 60 points, but whose support for Harris dropped enormously, to about 54 percent in a poll just prior to this election. Moreover, the large counties of Fresno, San Bernardino. Merced, and Stanislaus that flipped to Trump last week are all Hispanic-majority counties.
It is clear why Hispanics voted so differently in this election. Like many others, they worry about economic opportunity, crime, inflation, and illegal migration. As one Hispanic voter, who owns a small landscaping business, confided to me in 2022, “I love this country. We are so lucky to live here. I vote for politicians who talk about freedom and lowering taxes and fixing up our city and making schools better and lowering gas prices and increasing water supplies, which is important to landscapers.” It appears that many more are now voting like this individual. And if more eligible Hispanics exercise their right to vote, they can have a sizable effect on future elections.
Just how much of Newsom’s reaction to Trump’s election is political? Possibly a lot. Newsom could have waited until January to meet with legislators to discuss how Trump’s presidency would affect California, but calling for a special session in December generated considerable national media attention, including a New York Times piece that highlights how Newsom “has positioned himself nationally as one of Mr. Trump’s loudest critics.”
After being pushed aside within his party to make way for Harris’s candidacy, Newsom has returned as the “resistance” to president-elect Trump. But such a strategy fails to recognize that many of Trump’s disagreements with California—water policies that damage the agricultural industry, energy policies that raise costs and reduce reliability with few benefits, federal subsidies for a high-speed rail project that is grossly over budget and delayed by several decades, and California’s failure to address homelessness—are critical policy shortcomings that have much more to do with a lack of common-sense governance than partisanship. And common-sense governance is increasingly what more Californians—and more national voters—want.
