While California may not be a battleground in presidential elections, it’s home to some of the nation’s most hotly contested congressional races. With partisan control of the House of Representatives hanging in the balance, California’s races will help determine the national political context moving forward. When we examined voter registration in these key districts, a surprising pattern emerged: a small but significant number of California voters are switching parties—and Republicans are benefitting.
The political ground in these districts may have shifted since the last congressional election two years ago. COVID-19 and its downstream effects have moved populations around the state. Meanwhile, California’s automatic voter registration system has captured much of this movement with updated registration records, while boosting new registrations at the same time.
To understand what all this might mean for this year’s election, we created an interactive feature that uses detailed registration data—including partisan, racial/ethnic, age, and language breakouts of voter registrants. It also highlights new and recently moved registrants, and voter turnout in the 2020 and 2022 elections. The following is our initial high-level analysis of this data.
California’s competitive congressional districts (districts 3, 9, 13, 22, 27, 40, 41, 45, 47, and 49) are primarily clustered in three regions: the Central Valley, Orange County, and the Inland Empire east of Los Angeles. Currently, Republicans hold seven of the ten most competitive seats, with incumbents running in all but one—the open seat left by Democrat Katie Porter in District 47 in Orange County. In these ten competitive districts, 55% of likely voters currently favor the Democratic candidate and 41% favor the Republican candidate, according to PPIC’s September survey.