We've all heard the stories of how California doesn't matter to politicians in the presidential campaign. That's because the state is deeply blue, ensuring that no presidential candidate will ever visit California except to fundraise from the exuberant wealth.
But in terms of the Democratic convention, California holds 21% of the votes needed to become the party candidate, so the race is on to convince Californians to vote for the next Democratic presidential candidate.
So what matters most to Californians? Surprisingly, it's not any policy or legislation that Californians rally the strongest behind - it's actually just the simple ability to beat Trump in office, according to a new statewide poll, with nearly 55% of voters saying that was their highest priority while only 33% said that the candidate needed to align with their views.
In this race of whoever can oust Trump, Warren and Biden seem to be tied, with Biden taking popularity among male voters and older voters while Warren is more popular with younger and female voters.
However, despite California being so important to deciding the next Democratic candidate, primary candidates rarely take a second glance at California itself. Take, for example, the recent forum where all Democratic candidates were invited to speak to 5,000 delegates. Both Biden and Warren skipped out on the events themselves. It's not because California is not important, far from it - instead, it's diversity as well as it's delegate split makes it hard and expensive for candidates to reach all types of voters.
So in the end, California, despite being the world's 5th largest economy and the most populous state in the United States, goes largely unnoticed: for being deeply blue and deeply diverse, creating a lack of incentive to go out and vote, making sure it's one of the most ignored states in politics.
I agree with you that California has historically been overlooked in presidential campaigns. However, I started looking into it more and found that California has made itself more important in the 2020 Democratic primaries: California declared itself to be an early voting state, voting in March after just 4 other states. After this change, Democratic candidates have flooded to California, looking to gain support and momentum. California has actually made itself into one of the most important states in the primaries. If California supports one candidate, it has the power to put hat candidate far in the lead, swaying later states to vote that way too and making the difference significantly harder to make up for any candidate that has begun to fall behind. However, one thing that presidential candidates are complaining about in California, is that it is hard to broadcast to the state, as it is so big. This means that candidates that are already well known in California (Biden, Sanders, and Harris) have an advantage over the others, and can lead to any other candidate being out of the race early on. We will have to wait and see how this change in voting time will play out on the broad scale of the primaries, but California has taken steps to make sure it gets the attention it desires from the presidential candidates.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/us/politics/california-primary-2020.html