Why California Has a Dem-GOP Binary

Commentary

A CalMatters article this week reported “California stuck in Dem-GOP binary.” But it didn’t explain why. I will here. There are three major reasons, in order of importance.

First, there is the much-derided Electoral College. Democrats like to attack it because it’s not “democratic,” giving added weight to small states, as does the U.S. Senate. Each state gets electoral votes based on congressional representation: two for each Senator plus one for each representative.

In the 2020 U.S. Census, California’s population was 39,613,493. Wyoming’s was 581,075, or 1.5 percent of the Golden State’s.

In the 2024 election, California will get 54 electoral votes. But Wyoming will get three, or 5.6 percent of California’s total.

Do the same for other small, conservative states, and it’s easy to see why the pure democracy crowd hates the Electoral College: Alaska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, three each. Montana and Idaho, 4 each.

But what the Electoral College does is produce two usually moderate parties–because finishing third usually means getting no electoral votes. Ross Perot won 19 percent of the vote in 1992, but got zero electoral votes. His Reform Party soon fizzled.

If the two major parties get too far away from moderation—like the Republicans with Goldwater in 1964 and the Democrats with McGovern in 1972—they lose big. Barry Goldwater garnered only 39 percent of the vote to Lyndon Johnson’s 61 percent. George McGovern won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. In each case, the next election saw more moderate candidates who won: the Republicans won with Nixon in 1972, and the Democrats with Carter in 1976.

The alternative to the Electoral College, making the election more democratic through some sort of direct election, would only produce the chaos seen now in Europe. There no party gets a majority, and shifting coalitions are formed, briefly, only to be followed by more uncertainty.

Because California is part of the larger United States, the national pattern of two parties carries over to our elections. Politicians naturally want to get promoted to the national level. Legislators want to move up to Congress. Governors and U.S. senators enviously eye the Oval Office. To get a promotion from the voters, they have to work within the national election binary.

America’s founders had no idea about another reason why their genius in crafting the U.S. Constitution has saved us: nuclear weapons, of which America now wields 5,428—compared to 5,997 for Russia and 350 for China (probably a vast understatement), according to the tally by the Federation of American Scientists. An almost random shifting of political coalitions among multiple parties, as in Italy, Sweden, and Germany, could produce nuclear instability here. It’s bad enough wondering what a particular president might do when there are only two to choose from. But at least the Electoral College system, as I have described it, provides some stability.

Second, in 2010 California voters made the mistake of enacting Proposition 14, the Top Two system. As I predicted at the time, it wiped out what little clout remained to third parties:

I talked to three of the four top “other parties” or “minor parties,” as they sometimes call themselves. Currently, they’re the only four parties that meet state law to be automatically listed on state primary and general-election ballots. The Peace and Freedom Party didn’t get back to me.

Prop. 14 would be disastrous for minor parties, Libertarian Party spokesman Richard Winger told me; he’s also campaign manager for Christine Tobin, the party’s nominee for secretary of state, the post that runs state elections. And he edits Ballot Access News. “We’ve seen it in action in Washington state and Louisiana,” two states with similar measures, he said. In the 35 years Louisiana has had such a system, not a single minor party candidate has passed the gauntlet of the primary to make it onto the general election ballot.

Third parties can move forward some issues. And they provide a safety valve for voter outrage when the binary system breaks down. That happened with Perot’s 1992 campaign, which brought up populist themes that matured and were championed to victory by Republican Donald Trump in 2016. Another example was when Independent Jesse Ventura was elected Minnesota governor in 1998.

A missed opportunity in California was Independent Michael Schellenberger’s campaign as an Independent in this year’s June gubernatorial primary. He finished fourth, with 3 percent. So he’s not on the Nov. 8 Top Two runoff. Too bad. We’ve had an almost invisible campaign between Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is campaigning for president with ads broadcast in Florida and Texas, and state Sen. Brian Dahle, who’s too conventional a Republican to gain traction.

If Schellenberger were on the ballot, we would be hearing his innovative ideas on Generation IV nuclear power and other issues. Newsom still would win handily, but new ideas would be advanced for future examination and perhaps implementation.

Third, America itself obviously is bifurcating. An August Pew Research Center survey found:

On several traits, majorities of both Republicans and Democrats attribute negative stereotypes to members of the opposing party: An overwhelming majority of Democrats (83 percent) say Republicans are a lot or somewhat more closed-minded than other Americans, while nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (69 percent) say the same about Democrats.

Nearly three-quarters of Republicans say Democrats are more immoral (72 percent) than other Americans, while an identical share (72 percent) say Democrats are more dishonest. Smaller majorities of Democrats characterize Republicans as more immoral (63 percent) or more dishonest (64 percent).

That’s so different from what I grew up with in the 1960s and 70s in a Michigan factory town. My family were Republicans, but most of the kids in my high school were from working-class Democrat families. We disagreed on politics, but did so politely. In the elections mentioned above, Michigan went 67 percent for Democrat LBJ in 1964, but then went 56 percent for Republican Richard Nixon in 1972.

California, of course, once voted for either party depending on the candidates. But the last time a Republican won was President George H. W. Bush in 1988. The state is so Democratic the candidates don’t even campaign here past the primaries, except to troll for campaign cash.

People across America also are “sorting.” Republicans are tending to move to GOP states, especially low-tax places such as Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. Democrats are moving to California and other Democrat states. NPR reported in February, “America is growing more geographically polarized—red ZIP codes are getting redder and blue ZIP codes are becoming bluer. People appear to be sorting.”

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions returning such issues as abortion to the states probably will accelerate that sorting.

As I like to joke, the best way for a conservative Republican to survive in California is to leave.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.