Nationally, the message sent by American voters in this year’s midterm was about inflation; or democracy; or abortion; or Donald Trump. Any or all of those issues were the big reason why people voted the way they did, depending on which pundit was talking and which part of the country they were talking about.
Likewise, in Orange County, the election results (if not the punditry) suggest an equally wide mix of possible political messages.
But if this year’s midterm couldn’t reveal a coherent statement from Orange County voters (or hasn’t yet; votes still are being counted), raw election data does raise some clear questions about the state of the local electorate.
Is Orange County liberal or conservative?
On Aug. 6, 2019, for the first time in decades, the Orange County Registrar of Voters reported more registered Democrats in the county than registered Republicans. That day’s gap was 89 voters. In the 26-plus months since, the gap has grown to 80,578, meaning about 110 more people a day are registering with D rather than with R in the one-time Republican stronghold of Orange County.
As of Nov. 11, 2022, Democrats accounted for 37.5% of the county’s registered voters, while Republicans accounted for 33.1% and people who prefer no party accounted for 23.5%. Those aren’t Marin or San Francisco-level registration numbers, but they suggest the county isn’t particularly conservative.
What’s more, in the two big elections prior to this year’s midterm, county voters expressed growing support for Democratic candidates, sending them to the House, state legislature and county and city offices. Again, the election results weren’t always strongly liberal, and Democrats lost ground in some places while gaining in others — but the overall trend indicated Orange County voters weren’t leaning red.
So explain this: The latest ballot counts from this year’s midterm show voters in supposedly blue-leaning Orange County don’t want Democrat Gavin Newsom to be governor. He trailed Republican challenger Brian Dahle by about 2.5 percentage points when ballot counts were released Thursday, Nov. 10.
What’s more, the numbers show Orange County voters prefer Republican candidates for lieutenant governor, secretary of state, controller, treasurer, attorney general and insurance commissioner — in many cases by healthy margins. Statewide, all of those races are going to Democrats, also by wide margins.
Simply put, Orange County voters, a majority of whom are Democrats, appear to be rejecting Democrats, at least on the state ballot.
“The traditional pattern for a midterm electorate is that they’re more conservative than the voters in general elections,” said Marcia Godwin, a professor of public policy at the University of La Verne who studies and writes about politics in Southern California and elsewhere.
Godwin, like some others, suggested the high-intensity elections of 2018 and 2020 were outliers.
Godwin also noted that in Orange County Democrats have tend to gain ground when the population is growing, primarily because new arrivals tend to be young people and immigrants, and that the opposite happens when the county’s population is flat.
Since 2020, Census data shows Orange County, population 3.2 million, has lost about 20,000 people.
This year’s election numbers don’t show a strong red rebound — there are too many Democratic wins in the works for that to be true — but Godwin said the county might be more purple than the blue lean it showed in the past couple of elections.
“I don’t know if you could say the Orange County results this week are conservative, but based on the numbers alone, it would appear that there’s been a return to normal midterm turnout.”
Do Orange County voters care about abortion?
In June, when the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health overturned Roe v. Wade and made it possible for each state to enact its own rules about abortion access, local activists and political experts said it would be a big deal in the 2022 midterms.
Then, in the summer, when inflation remained high and gas prices didn’t come back to earth, many pundits believed abortion would be a second-tier issue for voters, particularly in places like Orange County, where abortion access isn’t under immediate threat.
Turns out the first wave of punditry was right, at least locally. Election results so far suggest Orange County voters strongly favor abortion access, and some activists believe it is boosting Democrats and Democratic causes up and down the ballot.
Local interest in abortion — and, broadly speaking, support for the right to get an abortion — is showing up in two ways this cycle, according to activists and people who track politics.
First, Proposition 1, which would codify the right to abortion in California’s constitution, is passing easily in Orange County; up by about 12 percentage points when the most recent ballot counts were released on the evening of Friday, Nov. 11.
Second, voters who support Prop 1 might be helping pro-choice candidates in everything from House races, where abortion law might be decided, to city council and school board races, where abortion typically isn’t part of the agenda.
“It’s clear Orange County voters made a cautious decision to demonstrate their support for abortion access. And I’m certain we’ll find that is helping with like-minded candidates up and down the ballot,” said Robert Armenta, senior vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties.
The issue, Armenta added, also has become a key driver for local politics.
Immediately after the Dobbs decision, on June 24, Armenta said Planned Parenthood and other groups mobilized to register young voters and endorse candidates who favor abortion access. That push made headlines for a short while before it fell out of the news cycle, but it carried on all summer.
Likewise, later in the summer, when some Republicans in the Senate suggested they would push for a national ban on abortion if their party gained control of Congress, some pro-choice activists noted a renewed interest in progressive candidates and in giving money to their campaigns.
“Access to abortion specifically was our number one issue with voters in Southern California,” Armenta said. “The Dobbs decision just re-awakened the community to what’s at stake, with abortion and marriage rights and the right to contraception.”
Candidates cared, too. Planned Parenthood in Southern California received a record number of endorsement requests from candidates. Armenta said, as an issue, abortion helped progressive candidates of all stripes, “particularly in places where they might have had a harder time, like Orange County.”
If true, “help” didn’t always translate into “pushed them to victory.”
At least two local incumbent House members from Orange County who oppose abortion — Young Kim, R-La Habra, and Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach — appear on track for reelection, according to recent ballot counts.
Still, others who favor access to abortion, including Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana and Linda Sanchez, D-Norwalk, have either won their race or are on the path to victory. And two others, Katie Porter, D-Irvine and Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, are currently leading tight races.
Armenta said it even played out in local elections, particularly after councils in San Clemente and Chino Hills moved to establish ordinances to ban abortion access in their cities.
“We won’t know until we can dive into the (post-election) data to see if abortion brought out new voters or younger voters, or exactly how it played out. But it was a huge shift in this election,” Armenta said.
“And it could be again going forward in 2024,” he added.
“This was the first electoral cycle where the word ‘abortion’ was spoken at all our rallies, where it was a point of emphasis. Our goal is to remove the stigma. That means this has to keep going.”
Are Orange County voters tired of politics?
The numbers suggest we might be.
Yes, it rained on Election Day, and rain tends to depress turnout. But that doesn’t explain the drop-off in voter interest when compared with the recent past.
Though a few more ballots could arrive through the mail, it looks like the turnout in Orange County was about 57% for this election.
In the most recent midterm, 2018, turnout was 71%, the biggest midterm in decades. In that election, Orange County voters had their first chance to weigh in on the Trump presidency. That year’s “blue wave” resulted in six Democrats from Orange County going to the House of Representatives.
In the 2020 election, Trump himself was on the ballot, and turnout in Orange County was 87.3%, according to county data, an all-time record.
For all the talk about how this election is historically important, and that the future of democracy in the United States is hanging in the balance, interest in actual candidates and ballot propositions apparently isn’t as high as some believed.
“There weren’t open seats to create a lot of interest. And, while maybe Prop 1 drew some voters, there wasn’t anything down the ballot to really bring a lot of people to the polls,” Godwin added.
“And, after the past couple of cycles, there might be some fatigue.”
Source: Orange County Register
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