In 2016, approximately 72% of Los Angeles County voters chose former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, for president while 23% cast votes for Republican Donald Trump.
In 2020, about 71% of the county’s voters went for Democrat Joe Biden while 27% voted for Trump for president.
Of the ballots that have been counted thus far in this year’s general election, roughly 65% of L.A. County voters backed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Another 32% voted for Trump.
The L.A. County registrar’s office estimated it had counted more than 3.4 million ballots as of Sunday, Nov. 10, and that it had about 325,300 ballots left to go. Even if Harris were to receive all of the remaining votes, at the best she would end up at roughly 68%.
Put simply, fewer people in L.A. County voted for the Democratic nominee this year and more went with the Republican candidate for president.
In addition, in this year’s race for Los Angeles district attorney, voters roundly rejected incumbent George Gascón, a Democrat with a far-left progressive agenda, in favor of Nathan Hochman, who previously ran as a Republican for state attorney general two years ago but ran as an independent this year.
So is Los Angeles County – where Democrats make up 52% of registered voters and Republicans make up 18% – becoming more conservative?
Before anyone reaches for that red crayon, one political expert had a message: Yes, voters here voted a bit more conservatively this year. But make no mistake, Los Angeles is still a Democrat-heavy county – and that won’t change anytime soon.
“L.A. County is a blue county. That’s not going away. How blue it’s going to be – dark blue or medium blue or light blue? It’s a little less dark blue than it was a week ago,” said Democrat Zev Yaroslavsky, a former L.A. city council member and former L.A. County supervisor who now serves as director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Republican Joel Fox, who worked on L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan’s gubernatorial campaign and now teaches at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy, agreed that L.A. remains a liberal county, as urban centers tend to be.
But he said there are signs from this year’s general election that “it’s not liberal across the board.”
Fox noted that the vast majority of L.A. County voters supported Proposition 36, which allows for tougher penalties for certain crimes. And L.A. County voters rejected Proposition 33 to expand rent control.
“I’m not denying that L.A. County is a strong liberal bastion,” Fox said. “However, there are (signs) that indicate that on some issues, there is a tendency to go more to the conservative position.”
Roxanne Hoge, communications director for the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, said it is telling that more voters in the county supported more conservative candidates this time – and despite the fact that many people who moved out of California in recent years aligned with Republicans.
“The people who left were the most common sense, Republican-leaning people that we had. So to overperform with the California exodus, yes, it does signify something,” Hoge said about this year’s election results.
“And what it signifies is something pretty simple: people don’t like to be mugged. … Being mugged is not a partisan issue,” she said about contests like the district attorney race, where public safety was on the agenda.
No matter how the numbers shake out for individual candidates or ballot measures, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Lindsey Horvath, a Democrat, made clear that in Los Angeles many of the values Democrats have fought for would be upheld here.
Last week, a day after Trump won a second presidential term, Horvath issued a statement affirming that L.A. County “will not abandon our values.”
“Los Angeles County will continue to protect our immigrant communities, and to affirm reproductive healthcare, LGBTQ+ rights, and the right of every person to live and be met with care first by their government,” Horvath stated. “Los Angeles County will remain the social safety net for our local communities, while striving to model for the nation what inclusion, harmony, and a more perfect union can look like.”
Yaroslavsky believes voter turnout in L.A. County this year was lower than the last presidential election, which, he said, could explain the poorer showing for Harris compared to the Democratic nominees in the last two presidential elections.
“It’s not clear whether the people who did not turn out to vote would’ve been more likely to vote for the Harris ticket,” Yaroslavsky said.
“The people who vote in every election, the majority of them are Democrats in L.A. County, but it’s a little more of a conservative turnout,” he said. “The people who vote in just the presidential elections tend to be working people, blue-collar people on the lower end of the economic spectrum, renters. If the turnout is down in this election, then it stands to reason that a significant portion of that drop is in that demographic, which may account for the potential drop” in support for Harris.
He note that while Rep. Adam Schiff won his U.S. Senate bid, the congressmember also appeared on track to receive a lower percentage of votes in L.A. County than Biden did four years ago. As of Sunday, Schiff had roughly 65% of the vote.
In terms of the overwhelming rejection of current District Attorney Gascón in this election, Yaroslavsky characterized it as voters wanting a “course correction” to someone with extreme liberal views.
“I don’t think that L.A. County is moving to an extreme right wing. But it says they didn’t like the direction that the chief prosecutor in L.A. County was taking. They wanted a more common sense approach,” he said.
That said, voters in neighboring counties have raised the possibility of a shift in Southern California’s electorate.
As of the latest vote counts, Trump led Harris in both San Bernardino and Riverside counties. There are still ballots left to count, but if the numbers hold Trump could be the first Republican presidential nominee since George W. Bush in 2004 to carry the Inland Empire.
Hoge, the spokesperson for L.A. County’s Republican Party, thinks the results of this year’s general election could encourage more middle-of-the-road people who in the past may have feared expressing their opinions in heavily liberal jurisdictions to speak out in the future.
“I think what it does for local elections in the future is that more people will step up to run for office,” she said. “Some of that fear has been taken away. Now, if there’s a little bit more ability to breathe easy and to say, ‘that policy doesn’t really work,” I think it’s a big step in the right direction.”
But will L.A. County ever shift so much to truly be considered red territory?
“California was considered a Republican state up until the 20th century,” Fox said. “So yeah, things can shift. Policies shift. Circumstances shift. You never say ‘never.’”
“But,” he added, “it’s not going to be next week.”
Staff Writer Jeff Horseman contributed to this report.
Related Articles
2024 Election Results: Whitesides more than doubles his lead over Garcia in House race
2024 Election Results: Kevin de Leon concedes, Garcia vs. Whitesides is close
2024 Election Results: Measure G for LA County government reform has small lead
2024 election results: Friday’s update for LA County’s closest Congress, state Senate, Assembly seats
2024 Election Results: Latest on LA City Council, LAUSD and other city races