California is a deeply liberal state. That may sound obvious, but it bears repeating: the state is not secretly Republican, no matter how much some people might wish otherwise.
The latest gubernatorial results aren’t needed to make the case, though they underline it. Not every race has been called, but most of the vote is in, and decades of election results and polling point in the same direction. The numbers are hard to explain away.
Voters have been giving Republicans a pretty clear message for years. The party might make a start on rebuilding by listening to it.
Xavier Becerra received about two-thirds of the vote against Republican Steve Hilton. Other Republican candidates for statewide office are faring similarly. This isn’t a close 52-48 result that invites endless theories about what went wrong. It’s closer to 66-34, across the ballot.
California Republicans haven’t won a statewide office since 2006. The latest registration figures show Democrats at 44.96% of voters and Republicans at 24.69%. If a hidden Republican majority is out there, it has done an unusually good job of staying hidden.
A damaged brand
The problem runs deeper than losing elections. In California, the Republican label itself seems to put off some people who might agree with the party on taxes, crime, regulation, or other issues. They may like a policy in isolation, then hesitate when it comes from a Republican.
Polling suggests that’s not just a hunch. A June 2025 Public Policy Institute of California survey found that 70% of likely voters viewed the Republican Party unfavorably. Among independents, the figure was 73%. In a September survey, 44% of California adults said the GOP had almost no good ideas, compared with 23% who said the same of Democrats. Those responses reflect views of the parties, not simply opinions about particular candidates.
Donald Trump didn’t start the decline. He entered a party that was already struggling.
It can be easy to forget that California once played a central role in Republican politics. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan came from the state, and George H.W. Bush won it in 1988. Pete Wilson was reelected governor in 1994, when Republicans made up just over 37% of registered voters. By 2006, their share had fallen to around 34%. In 2018, voters registered with no party preference outnumbered Republicans for the first time. The GOP hasn’t bounced back.
One common explanation points to Wilson’s support for Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative that sought to block some public services for undocumented immigrants. Nearly 59% of voters approved it. Opponents built an organizing effort in response, and the fight left a lasting mark on the party’s relationship with Latino voters. Researchers have documented that shift.
Still, one ballot measure can’t account for three decades of demographic change, political missteps, and Republican losses in the mostly white suburbs that once helped keep the party competitive.
It would also be a mistake to pin the whole decline on Trump. He inherited it, though he has become its most visible modern symbol. In California, he won 31.6% of the vote in 2016, 34.3% in 2020, and 38.3% in 2024. His share grew. The party’s statewide fortunes did not.
His close association with the GOP has nevertheless given Democrats an easy target. Becerra campaigned against Trump’s policies and linked Hilton, who had Trump’s endorsement, to the president.
Building the party’s ranks back up won’t be simple. A recent PPIC analysis found that just 18% of Californians registering for the first time after January 2025 chose to register Republican. Among new voters under 35, the share was only 15%. A party can’t rely forever on the voters it already has.
By Wednesday afternoon, the bad news had spread beyond statewide contests. Five Republican Assembly incumbents had lost to Democrats, state Sen. Tony Strickland had conceded, and a Senate seat being vacated by Republican Minority Leader Brian Jones had flipped to Democrats. Some races were still outstanding, but California Target Book projected that Republicans could end up with only 12 of the Assembly’s 80 seats. That would be the party’s smallest caucus since 1875.
Oof.
Take Alexandra Macedo. Just months after Assembly Republicans chose her as their leader, she was trailing Democrat Hipolito Angel Cerros by 325 votes in a Central Valley district Trump had carried by nearly 19 points two years earlier. Republican state Sen. Roger Niello was also in a surprisingly tight race against a Democrat whose party reportedly hadn’t spent money to support him. These weren’t all unwinnable districts. And yet the Republicans were struggling.
Republican consultant Dave Gilliard put it this way: candidates had an R beside their names, but voters saw a T for Trump. Perhaps. But the party was in trouble before Trump entered the race, and now it has to contend with two damaged brands.
Policies aren’t candidates
Here’s the complication: Californians don’t automatically support every progressive proposal. They can be selective about policies, even when they regularly vote for Democrats.
Taxes are a good example. Voters approved higher income taxes on top earners in 2012 and extended them in 2016. This year, they made those rates permanent but rejected a one-time tax on billionaires. They have also kept Proposition 13’s central protections in place since 1978, while changing some of its details. In 2024, they turned down a proposal that would have made certain local bonds easier to approve.
Voter ID offers another example. An April Berkeley IGS survey initially found 56% support for a ballot measure requiring identification at the polls. That sounds promising for supporters. But after respondents heard arguments on both sides, including information about the proposal’s backers, support dropped to 39%.
Proposition 39, sponsored by Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, lost by about 60% to 40%. The survey doesn’t establish that DeMaio’s name alone changed people’s minds. The measure’s details and the opposition campaign mattered too. Still, the result is a reminder that support for a policy in the abstract doesn’t necessarily translate into votes for a Republican candidate.
I’ve seen DeMaio described lately as a Republican firebrand. That’s a little surprising to me: I remember him as a socially liberal Republican who strongly supported same-sex marriage. Whatever has changed about DeMaio, the party’s image has changed more.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the most prominent exception to the GOP’s decline, may have shown less about the party’s strength than his admirers hoped. He was a celebrity with broad appeal and, by Republican standards, liberal views on many social issues. He won a second term in 2006, and Republican Steve Poizner also won the insurance commissioner’s race. Neither victory led to a lasting revival. Schwarzenegger had a powerful personal brand. That was an advantage, but it also made it difficult to build anything beyond himself.
The farm-team advantage
The California Republican Party often looks like a small group of loyal regulars trying to keep things going. That’s not a criticism of the volunteers who continue to show up. It’s a criticism of the people who haven’t built an effective political organization around them.
Democrats organize at the neighborhood level, through unions, clubs, school boards, city councils, county governments, and campaigns that help prepare the next generation of candidates. The state party promotes year-round canvassing and volunteer training. Elections are one part of that work. Republicans too often act as if a six-month campaign is the whole job.
Cerros, the Democrat who may yet unseat the Republican Assembly leader, shows what a political farm team can look like. He served as mayor of Lindsay, a small agricultural town in the Central Valley, and previously interned for Democratic state Sen. Melissa Hurtado. Local offices aren’t just places where Democrats win. They help potential candidates gain experience, build relationships, and prepare to run for higher office.
Republicans may also have weakened themselves decades ago by embracing one of their favored reforms: term limits.
Passed in 1990, Proposition 140 restricted legislative service and cut staffing. The idea was to push out entrenched politicians and return Sacramento to ordinary citizens. That didn’t quite happen.
Political networks endured, while lawmakers repeatedly had to start over. Democrats could move candidates from local office to the Assembly, then the Senate, and eventually statewide positions. Term limits made a well-developed pipeline of candidates more important, not less.
The cuts also reduced the Legislature’s ability to do its own work. By 1991, lobbyists were already filling gaps left by fewer legislative staff. A 2024 study found that those staffing cuts increased the relative success of bills backed by interest groups.
The result is familiar: elected officials, who answer to voters, lost expertise and support. The people paid to influence them kept theirs.
Republicans often criticize entrenched power, but they’ve paid less attention to where it goes when elected officials are weakened. Political knowledge doesn’t simply disappear. It moves somewhere else.
Where the fight goes next
So what should Republicans focus on now? I wouldn’t spend too much time imagining a quick comeback for a party label that alienates so much of California’s electorate. The more interesting question may be where the next fight over political power will happen.
My guess is that California will see more tension between establishment Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America over the next six years. Socialist Nithya Raman defeated Karen Bass, who is somewhat less far to the left, in the Los Angeles mayoral contest. Socialist Jane Kim defeated conventional Democrat Ben Allen in the insurance commissioner’s race. The wealth-tax debate has also divided Democrats. A coalition can win elections while disagreeing about what government should do afterward.
It’s possible that left- and right-wing populists could find common ground for a time on the cost of living, government favoritism, or failing public institutions. They would still disagree sharply on immigration, policing, taxes, and plenty else. Working together doesn’t require pretending those differences aren’t there. It means being realistic about what can be done jointly.
Politics, after all, is the art of the possible.
There’s no guarantee such an opening will appear. But it seems more plausible than expecting millions of disaffected Democrats and independents to suddenly decide they were Republicans all along.
If the next serious challenge to California’s political order comes from people who reject the Republican label, that would be a fitting outcome of the party’s long decline. Voters have been telling Republicans who they are for a generation. Maybe rebuilding starts with taking them seriously.
