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California leads the States in donations to Trump through Q3

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When governors Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis held their “debate” this past November, one minor fact missing from the discussion was that donors in “the Golden State” have actually led the nation in supporting Donald Trump’s re-election campaign so far. Data from the Federal Election Commission shows that since August 2022 – September 2023, Californians have made at least 167,000 donations for the 2024 presidential election, $6.2 million of which has gone to the former president. Texan donors came in second for Trump over the last year at $5 million, while Floridians placed third for him at $4.6 million. New Yorkers, by contrast, contributed little more than $1.7 million to Trump, who himself is a former New Yorker. Trump first announced his intention to run for a second presidential term in November 2022.

In 2020, 23 of 58 counties in California went to Trump, including Kern, Shasta, El Dorado, and Placer counties, or where the state is far more rural than Hollywood and San Francisco still lead many to imagine. Trump tallied over 6 million votes from California that year, or more than any Republican candidate in state history. This also helps to explain why even though Trump lost areas like Orange County, there was still growth in support for him through certain segments of it, including in Asian-American and Latino communities there.

California’s 52 Counties and their choice for the presidency in 2020. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Still, $6 million from Trump voters in California during the past year does not mean the state as a whole is friendly to his camp. Instead, it’s indicative of an energized California Republican electorate early in the race, one that is bound to be outmatched at a rate of 2 to 1 by California’s Democratic supporters as the U.S. inches closer to November 2024. Yet the volume of donations from Trump voters across the state over the last year are consistent with California’s towering economic weight going into the 2020 election as well.

At that time, the nation’s most populous state led the nation with presidential campaign contributions at more than $290 million. New York came in second at $141 million, while Texas and Florida doled out $109 million and $103 million, respectively; of dollars from California for Biden or Trump in 2020, more than 3/4ths went to the Democrat.

But where exactly does all this money go?

chicago cityscape
Michigan sky-line. Photo courtesy of by Pixabay.

To the “swing-states,” of course! In the form of television and radio ads, not to mention text messages and social media. This is because the electoral college system, which is a winner-take-all system in which just 51% of a state’s popular vote awards the state to any given candidate, makes it so hundreds of millions of dollars from California or Texas just support Biden or Trump landing slim majorities in a few swing-state counties. As the Washington Post noted recently:

“Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who won the 2016 popular vote by 2.9 million votes, or 2 percent, could have won the electoral college if about 80,000 people in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had voted differently. In 2020, about 45,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin could have changed the outcome of that race, even though Joe Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million.”

  • 2016 Election – UVA
  • 2020 Election – UVA

In summer 2023, then, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics noted that given the last few election cycles and which states were won by a slim majority for the Democratic or Republican candidate, there are likely just four states to watch for 51% going to Trump or Biden in 2024:

“The four Toss-ups are Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — the three closest states in 2020 — along with Nevada, which has voted Democratic in each of the last four presidential elections but by closer margins each time (it is one of the few states where Joe Biden did worse than Hillary Clinton, albeit by less than a tenth of a percentage point).”

In all likelihood, then, those $6 million for Trump from California’s red counties are pouring down in counties throughout Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada. According to the Washington Post, outreach in some of these areas is already focusing on “Black, Latino, and young and female voters.” But to appreciate how much the electoral college system undermines California voters for the presidency, consider that even if the entire population of all four of these swing-states were suddenly combined, the Grizzly bear state would still have nearly 13 million more people to count for taxation and representation.

The Center for Politics also noted that Pennsylvania and North Carolina may also be in the mix in 2024. And it’s key to underline that the Center’s report was published prior to the brutal conflict in Palestine and Israel this fall, which has definitely diminished support for Biden from certain swing-state voters who chose him over Trump in 2020. Nowhere has this been more pronounced than in Minnesota and Michigan, where key swathes of Muslim and Arab American communities are now determined to deny Biden a second term.

For those wondering how Q3’s donations to Trump from California worked out locally, in the city of Los Angeles, out of just over 4,600 donations to presidential campaigns, there was an overwhelming sum of donations to Republican challengers for the office over the last year. But a division between donations to Republican alternatives to Trump and Trump himself reflected the dilemma for the GOP nationally. For example, 842 of donations from this set netted $507,000 for Joe Biden, while just over 1,300 donations from the same set provided nearly $900,000 for Republicans like Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy, among others.

By contrast, while Trump garnered just over $200,000 from the city of Los Angeles over the last year, he did so from more than 2,300 donations, which will also shift soon given his growing lead over the pack during this fall season. For the record, about 162 donations from this L.A. set also went to third-party and long-shot candidates such as Cornel West and Marianne Williamson.

Want to guess how many donations for Trump or Biden sailed out from 90210, or the Beverly Hills area zip code?

Naturally, this is a developing story. To get the scoop on Q4’s reports and hear more, be sure you’re subscribed to J.T. the L.A. Storyteller!

J.T.

California Primary Elections: June 2018 Recap

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According to the Washington Post, just over 6.9 million people in California cast a vote for the state’s June 2018 Primaries–the largest recorded in the state’s history for a primary election–out of a total of over 19 million registered voters, to make for a 36% ‘return’ rate.

However, when considering the total number of all potential voters in the State’s Registrar, listed by Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s records as being at 25 million eligible voters, the turnout rate becomes 27%, or just over a fourth of the possible turnout.

To make things more interesting, when considering the total population of California, the most recent census records show that the Golden State is comprised of over 39.5 million people. To be sure, the census also counts people who are imprisoned, undocumented immigrants, and other non-voting citizens such as youth under eighteen years old. Nevertheless, if the total population is considered, it makes the Primary’s ‘turnout’ rate even smaller, at 17% of all the citizenry in the state, or less than a fifth of the ‘democratic’ or participating possibilities.

In contest for June 2018’s primary elections was the state’s Governorship, a seat for one U.S. Senator’s position, various seats for the U.S. House of Representatives, local courtroom positions, measures or ordinances varying from county to county, and more, like the recall of Judge Aaron Persky in Santa Clara County, for one.

Now, a quick glance at which groups comprise the California population:

From the U.S. Census Bureau’s ‘Quick Facts’ online:

At 15.4 million, Latinos account for 39% of California’s population.

At 14.6 million, Whites hold 38.8% of California’s population.

At 5.9 million, Asian-Americans maintain 15% of California’s population.

And at 2.5 million, African-Americans constitute 6.5% of California’s population.

At 633,000, Native Americans compose 1.6% of California’s population. And at 198,000, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders form 0.5% of California’s population.

My favorite data for this election, however, is Political Data, Inc’s Absentee Vote Tracker (AVT), which tracked the early return of ballots on both the day before the Primary election as well as the day of, tracking up to 2.8 million returns of the 6.9 returns overall.

We’ll take a look at some of the numbers, particularly the following about which groups were mailed a ballot for the primaries, and which groups actually submitted those ballots.

According to the AVT, the day before and the day of the election, the percentage of ballots held by the states voter’s along ethnic lines were:

Latinos: 2.2 million (25% of the total)
Asian-Americans: 1.05 million (12% of the total)
African-Americans: 312,000 (4% of the total)
Whites: 5.2 million (59% of the total)

What the numbers suggest is reason for pause: similarly to L.A. County’s Special and Municipal Elections, voting at the State level is still a matter of disparity between the White and Non-White populations who make up California.

Remember our Census data: at 15.4 million of the overall population in California, Latinos outnumber Whites, even if by only less than a percentage point. When it comes to ballots held between Latinos and Whites before election day, however, there are more than two White voters for every Latino voter, and nearly five times as many White voters for every Asian-American voter.

On the day of the Primary election, the numbers are more startling.

Latino returns: 367,000 (13% of the total)
Asian-American returns: 295,000 (11% of the total)
African-American returns: 75,000 (3% of the total)
White returns: 2.04 million (76% of the total)

Of course, one should also note that these numbers are from just the day before as well as the day of the vote, which makes them slightly incomplete for ballots that take a few more days to get in. But in midterm elections like these, which are usually less popular and thus more predictable, early returns are indicators of a normal distribution more often than not. In other words, after counting the total overall, the 76% rate of Whites who voted in this last election is probably off by only a few percentage points in one direction or the other.

The implications are that the current disparities throughout California between white voter rates and those of people of color when considering the larger voter eligibility pool of the latter is not just unfortunate, but something of a public safety concern. If recent trends in U.S. politics show us anything, it’s that very few groups feel adequately represented by the country’s current institutional makeup. Just as relevant: although many California officials certainly like to claim they welcome immigration and the diversity of the land, when it comes to the distribution of power between its various groups, California’s white population is as much in control of the state as whites are in places like Tennessee or Arkansas, where residents voted overwhelmingly for the current administration.

It was in 2014 that the PEW Research center identified Latinos as the largest ethnic group in California, which is considered a preview for the overall direction of the U.S.’s ‘majority-minority‘ poised to arrive in the next twenty-five years or so. But if the current trends in California’s voting disparity between whites and non-whites here continues, one can only reasonably calculate for an even more radical disparity at the national level in terms of power and policy between the groups than what we’re seeing today.

J.T.