California's Partisan Divide Flows From Land Use

The Democrats' share of the state's 15.6 million registered voters (42.7 percent) has plummeted from 57-plus percent three decades ago, and continues to shrink.

"A few days after the voter registration data were published, the Department of Finance released its newest population estimates, and they showed a strong correlation with the voter numbers. The counties in which Republican voter strength has been growing are also the counties whose populations are growing the fastest -- primarily those in the Inland Empire of Southern California and the Central Valley of Northern California.

"Simply put, the slower-growing -- but very populous -- urban counties along the coast are becoming increasingly Democratic, while the faster-growing inland counties are becoming increasingly Republican. It's really a two-pronged phenomenon. California's population growth is driven almost entirely by foreign immigration, which for the most part is going into the urban centers, while inland suburbs are growing largely because of movement of middle-class families from the cities.

That shift -- perhaps a form of white flight --- means that urban centers such as Los Angeles are undergoing rapid socioeconomic and cultural transformation even though their overall populations are growing slowly. And because immigrants are either ineligible to vote, or vote only scantily, the relative political importance of the urban centers is slowly diminishing."