5/27/2021 UPDATE: While browsing this post in the last week, I noticed a mistake on Visual 3: Del Norte County is labeled as a 2008 Obama/2010 Colley county, but it did not vote for Obama in 2008. The map and text below describing 2008 Presidential/2010 AG county winners are corrected.
The Implications of California's 2010 AG Election for 2021
Introduction: The 2010 California Attorney General election may be well-known now because now-VPOTUS Kamala Harris (D) ran in and won her first elected position in that race. Electorally, this election is notable because it represents the one of the only instances since 2008 that a Republican has come close to winning a statewide office in California. In the past two months, I have dedicated two posts to discussing the ongoing recall movement against Governor Gavin Newsom (D), which is almost certain to make it to the ballot at this point (White). By the end of the year, I will likely end up dedicating a significant portion of this blog to the upcoming recall election, vis-à-vis the extensive amount of content I dedicated to the 2020 federal elections last year. While electoral, political, and socio-demographic conditions have changed since, understanding the 2010 AG election is critical to understanding what even a theoretical (narrow) successful recall of Gov. Newsom and/or a Republican statewide victory would look like in the current era.
Brief Overview: In 2010, then-California Attorney General Jerry Brown (D) decided to run for his former office as Governor of the Golden State (which he eventually won back). While the Democratic primary field was highly-fractured, then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris won the nomination handily. In the Republican primary, moderate Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley emerged as the nominee, creating a north-south electoral contest (Myers, "Last Call"). Despite his and the Republican Party's efforts, Harris narrowly won with 46% of the vote to Cooley's 45.28%, making him the highest-performing statewide Republican in that year's elections (Myers, "GOP's"). While Cooley initially declared victory on Election Night, the race was not projected by major media outlets for three weeks due to a tight result. Eventually, Harris was projected the winner by a narrow 50,000 vote margin and Cooley conceded to her (Leonard). The final margin of victory for Harris ended up being under 1%, while her raw vote margin was about 74,000, making it the closest statewide election that year ("Statement of Vote," 2010, 8).
Chart 1: 2010 California AG Treemap
Note: As per usual with my electoral treemaps, box sizes refer to the raw vote margin, while colors refer to the percentage margin. For all of the data visualizations on this post, % margins, raw vote margins, 2008-2010 shift, and third-party percentages were self-calculated in Excel.
Data Source: "Statement of Vote, November 2, 2010 General Election," 23-25.
Visual 1: 2010 California AG County-Level Election % and Vote Margin Results
Data Source: "Statement of Vote, November 2, 2010 General Election," 23-25.
Election Results: Both the treemap in Visual 1 and the two electoral maps in Visual 2 reveal the extent to which Harris's 2010 victory was razer-thin. While Harris performed well in traditional Democratic strongholds such as the Bay Area, coastal counties north of Monterey, and Los Angeles County, these margins were not as solid as those Barack Obama (D) had received two years prior (more on that below). Meanwhile, Cooley drew most of his support from the interior and southern portions of the state, especially in traditional GOP strongholds such as Kern, Orange, Riverside, and San Diego Counties. His raw vote margin in Orange County alone almost equaled that of Harris's in Los Angeles County, while his margins in the Inland Empire counties (Riverside and San Bernardino), San Diego, and Kern significantly held Harris's statewide margin down. While this blog post is not part of the The San Joaquin Valley Politics Project, note that Cooley won all 7 SJV counties, and performed well in the Sacramento Valley as well.
Visual 2: 2010 AG Third-Party Vote by County:
Data Source: "Statement of Vote, November 2, 2010 General Election," 23-25.
The Third-Party Vote: Visual 2 above showcases the percentage of the vote received by third-party candidates and independents in the 2010 Attorney General election. Support for third-parties was highest in the northern part of the state (coastal and interior), the Sierra Nevada region, and the High Desert region. On the other hand, the San Joaquin Valley counties and Southern California had relatively lower levels of support for third-party candidates.
2010 AG vs. 2008 President:
Visual 3: 2008 President-2010 AG County Voting Map
Data Source: "Statement of Vote: November 4, 2008 General Election," 17-22; "Statement of Vote, November 2, 2010 General Election," 23-25.
In 2008, Barack Obama won California by 24%, which represented a massive swing from 2004's 10% victory for Kerry. In turn, Obama's 2008 victory (since exceeded by Hillary Clinton in 2016) represented the largest Democratic victory in the state since 1964 (Chaming). A total of 12 counties flipped from red to blue that year compared to 2004, all of which except Trinity and Butte in the north have constantly voted blue since (Butte did flip back to blue in 2020 after voting for Romney and Trump) (Sullivan). However, as seen in Visual 3 below, Cooley's near-victory made significant inroads into Obama's county map, as he flipped back all 12 Bush-Obama counties, Bush 2000-Kerry 2004 Mono County, one county that had voted blue starting in 1992 (Sacramento), and another that had voted blue starting in 1988 (Santa Barbara) (Sullivan). Furthermore, as shown in Visual 1 above, Lake County north of the Bay Area also nearly flipped red, as did Alpine in the High Desert. All of these counties voted for both Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Steve Poizner (R) four years prior as part of their double-digit victories that represent the last Republican statewide victories in California.
Visual 4: 2008 President-2010 AG County Swing Map
Data Source: "Statement of Vote: November 4, 2008 General Election," 17-22; "Statement of Vote, November 2, 2010 General Election," 23-25.
Looking past county-level partisan voting results, Visual 4 shows the percentage margin that each California county swung by between the 2008 Presidential and 2010 Attorney General elections. Per Visual 3 above, every county in the state became more Republican relative to the 2008 presidential results. However, there was wide variation in how much each county swung. In particular, many of the coastal counties, even in the Bay Area, saw wide swings of 20% or more towards the Republicans. The pro-Republican swing in Southern California especially stands out, considering that Obama won all the counties in the region except for Kern and Orange. In the Bay Area, the swings were largest in the suburban-dominated counties, including Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Sonoma, while urban/suburban Alameda and urban San Francisco did not swing as much. Finally, Obama- and Kerry-won Mono County in the High Desert swung hard right between the 2008 presidential and 2010 Attorney General elections, an exception to the rule noted below. On the other hand, while inland counties in the north and Sierra Nevada regions swung more red, the swing there was nowhere as much as other counties relative to 2008. This is probably a reflection on the fact that these counties were already solidly-red before the 2010 elections, and so had far less room to become more Republican.
Relative to the 2010 Attorney General third-party vote, the only major pattern that stands out is the lack of large pro-Republican swings in Northern California, a region where the third-party vote was larger than the rest of the state. On the other hand, the third-party vote share was relatively small in Southern California counties, which saw massive swings towards Cooley from McCain. Based on this information, it seems unlikely that the significant third-party vote share (equaling 9%) directly hurt Harris. Instead, the close result seems to be the result of Cooley winning back Obama-won voters and areas, especially in suburban parts of the state.
Conclusion and Implications: Several weeks ago, I explored the 2006 victories of Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Steve Poizner (R) for full terms as Governor and Insurance Commissioner, respectively. As of now, both are the last two Republicans to win statewide office, although the 2010 Attorney General election represents the closest attempt since. Yet, as noted previously on this blog, Republicans are adamant to unseat Governor Newsom, whether through a recall election this year or regular midterm election in 2022. The results and analysis produced here largely back up some of the same implications I noted on the post about Arnold and Steve. In particular, any statewide Republican hoping to win California will have to significantly claw into Democratic margins in the urban/suburban-dominated Southern California and Bay Area counties that have shifted significantly blue since 2008. Yet, it has to be reiterated that political and socio-demographic conditions have significantly changed in California since 2010, especially the state has becoming increasingly younger and diverse, and in parallel with this, shifting significantly blue in the last decade (Dann et al.). Even so, the results of the 2010 Attorney General election do provide a theoretical roadmap for what a Republican victory would look like in the Golden State, although the exact numbers and margins are likely to be different.
Data Source:
"Statement of Vote: November 4, 2008 General Election." California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, 13 Dec. 2008, elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2008-general/sov_complete.pdf, 17-22. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
"Statement of Vote: November 2, 2010 General Election." California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, 6 Jan. 2011, elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2010-general/complete-sov.pdf, 23-25. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
Works Cited:
Chamings, Andrew. "Here's how California has voted in the past 15 presidential elections." SFGate, 3 Nov. 2020, www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/who-did-California-vote-for-president-15694779.php. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
Dann, Carrie, et al. "California could be headed for very different recall than the last one." NBC News, 17 Feb. 2021, www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/california-could-be-headed-very-different-recall-last-one-n1258093. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
Leonard, Jack. "Kamala Harris wins attorney general's race as Steve Cooley concedes [Updated]." Los Angeles Times, 24 Nov. 2010, latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/steve-cooley-kamala-harris-attorney-general.html. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
Myers, John. "GOP's Cooley Beats... GOP's Whitman." Capital Notes, KQED News, 22 Nov. 2010. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 25 Nov. 2010, web.archive.org/web/20101125134559/http://blogs.kqed.org/capitalnotes/2010/11/22/gops-cooley-beats-gops-whitman/. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
---. "Last Call For Primary 2010." Capital Notes, KQED News, 9 Jun. 2010, The Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 25 Nov. 2010, web.archive.org/web/20101121235340/http://blogs.kqed.org/capitalnotes/2010/06/09/last-call-for-primary-2010/. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
Sullivan, Robert David. "How the red and blue map evolved over the past century." America: The Jesuit Review, 29 Jun. 2016, www.americamagazine.org/content/unconventional-wisdom/how-red-and-blue-map-evolved-over-past-century. Accessed 27 Mar. 2021.
White, Jeremy. "Newsom says California recall likely to qualify, tries to soften Feinstein stance." Politico, 16 Mar. 2021, www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/03/16/newsom-california-recall-appears-to-have-enough-signatures-1368400. Accessed 28 Mar. 2021.
Nathan Parmeter
Author and Host, The Parmeter Politics and Policy Record
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