Dems also have little to be complacent about; young registrants aren't flocking to the donkey party either.... since 2015, Democrats have added 1 million new voters, while Republicans have dropped 250,000.
“It’s a terrible situation,” said Tony Quinn, a former GOP consultant who is now a senior editor of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which tracks state political races. “They’re not getting new voters, and they’re losing the ones they have.”
One of the party’s biggest obstacles in California is President Trump, who has virtually no strong backing in a deep-blue state that lacks the coal miners, steelworkers and other blue-collar types who form his base in other states, Quinn added.
“There’s nothing in California that works in the Republicans’ favor,” he said. “The demographic growth is in Latinos and Asians, who back Democrats, and the decline is in older white people, who are the Republican constituency.”
Does this trend reflect a feeling that democratic (small "d") politics mean nothing to these new voters? Or does living in a one party state feed a feeling that politics is an irrelevance?Through Feb. 10, 142,717 16- and 17-year-olds pre-registered to vote, Secretary of State Alex Padila reports. Their affiliation:
- No-party preference: 51.5 percent
- Democrats: 31.66 percent
- Republicans: 10.42 percent
I wish I could be confident that this apparent complacency won't be broken by an abrupt discovery that young Californians need government to work, whether because of human or climate disaster.
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