One way to look at what transpired in California—politically that is—in 2024: Not much really changed.
Or so it would appear, if taking only a quick glimpse at the top of the November ballot.
Yes, Vice President Kamala Harris carried the Golden State by a no-doubt-about-it 20-point advantage over now-president-elect Donald Trump (that number certified only late last week thanks to California’s molasses-like vote-tallying). In the other marquee race, congressman Adam Schiff moves to the other side of the US Capitol as a newly minted US senator after breezing to victory over baseball great Steve Garvey—Republicans now winless in such contests (presidential and senatorial) since the exit year of the Reagan presidency.
So, no news there.
That said, it’s what’s below the political surface that merits scrutiny. Well, that and a question of how California governor Gavin Newsom decides to approach the final two years of his reign in Sacramento.
Let’s start with Harris’s (under)performance and work our way down the ticket.
While Harris collected 58.9% of the statewide vote, with a tally just short of 9.3 million votes, she received about 1.8 million fewer votes than what Joe Biden mustered in 2020, with Trump improving on his 2020 performance by about 75,000 votes.
Despite her deep California roots (born in Oakland, held local and statewide office for the better part of two decades prior to the vice presidency), Harris managed to lose the Democrats’ share of the vote, compared with 2020, in all but one of the Golden State’s 58 counties, losing at least 10 percentage points in 43 counties. Trump, on the other hand, flipped 10 California counties and increased the Republicans’ vote share in 21 of the 25 counties he lost.
Meanwhile, further down the ballot, causes that Harris and her progressive acolytes hold dear weren’t exactly boffo at the box office, as they like to say in Hollywood.
California’s Proposition 6, which aimed to put an end to prisoners’ “involuntary servitude” (translation: requiring inmates to work), lost by almost one million votes. Proposition 32 sought to raise California’s minimum wage to $18. It likewise failed, by about 215,000 votes—the first time a minimum-wage increase was rejected by voters anywhere in America in nearly 30 years.
But those results are readily apparent, as opposed to a more subtle shift in Californians’ voting habits. Here, I refer you to an observation in this Orange County Register op-ed by Corey Uhden, a California-based Republican strategist, who notes the following about the trend of Latino voters not falling in line behind the Democratic Party in 2024:
In California, the counties with the highest share of Hispanic and Latino populations experienced the largest red shifts.
For all of the media attention devoted to Trump’s gains among Latino communities elsewhere across the nation (for example, flipping a South Texas border county that last voted Republican in the heady days of William McKinley), it’s the California results that are worth noting for this reason: If right-of-center candidates and causes can make inroads with a portion of the California electorate supposedly poisoned by a harsh conservative messaging (in this case, immigration and border security), are we looking at more changes to come in the Golden State’s political status quo?
Which is why one of the more intriguing California storylines in 2024 was the stunning outcome of Proposition 36, which addressed the Golden State’s much-chronciled retail crime spree by allowing the return of felony prosecution for thefts under $950. The governor and the state legislature opposed Prop 36 (more felons behind bars means a greater portion of the state budget devoted to corrections facilities). But California’s electorate felt otherwise: Of the 10 ballot measures on this year’s November slate, Prop 36 was the only one to pass in all of California’s 58 counties.
What this suggests for the portion of California voters looking to circumvent Sacramento’s will: The Golden State’s initiative process may be the answer—more so than pouring millions of dollars into quixotic, top-of-ticket quests for non-Democrats.
Why this suggestion? Look at the math. In 2022, California voters sided with the state’s GOP on two-thirds of ballot initiatives. Last month, it was eight out of nine measures.
What that could portend for the 2026 election cycle, albeit with plenty of planning, sound messaging, and generous funding: a chance to undo ungregious states policies, à la Proposition 36. One possibility is California’s misadventures in high-speed rail construction, which began in November 2008 with the public’s approval of Proposition 1A (a $10 billion down payment for an estimated $33 billion undertaking to be completed as early as 2020). Today, per the Los Angeles Times, California high-speed rail “is $100 billion short and many years from reality.”
Making matters worse for train enthusiasts: California’s high-speed rail project has drawn the attention of House Republicans (California GOP congressman Kevin Kiley plans to introduce a bill redirecting federal funding to state roads and infrastructure); Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s designated cochair of his Department of Government Efficiency Initiative, took to his social media platform to cite high-speed rail as an example of wasteful spending.
All of which means: Should Musk and Kiley get their way, Newsom and the Democratic legislature will have to go to the ballot with a new intiative looking for funding to make up for the lack of federal dollars.
Or, fiscal conservatives could mount their own initiative to kill the project altogether.
Such a scenario puts California’s governor in an awkward position. In his first State of the State address, in 2019, Newsom inadvertently caused a ruckus with these words: “Let’s be real. The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to LA. I wish there were.”
Newsom promptly went into damage control, explaining that he didn’t intend to kill the project. But in 2026, his last year in office, would the same governor who purposely did not actively campaign against Proposition 36 want to risk his reputation on a rail project that borders on the indefensible?
And that question, in turn, leads to another, of how Newsom plans ride out the remainder of his second and last term (since the passage of 1990’s Proposition 140, California governors can serve only two terms). Will Newsom concentrate on his state’s myriad challenges, or will the lure of national politics—an open presidential race in 2028 and a Democratic Party currently experiencing something of an identity crisis after Trump’s surprisingly easy win—prove as irresistible to Newsom as it was this past year?
And here you thought 2025, an “off year” in California, election-wise, would be off-limits to all sorts of intrigue.
