The May 12, 2020 special election in California’s US House District 25 was unusual. For the first time in many years, a Congressional District in California went from Democratic to Republican. What was the underlying cause for this? I think it had to be dissatisfaction with the way Governor Newsom, and mayors of major cities there, handled the COVID-19 crisis.
If you look at the differences between the polling that occurred in the March 3, 2020 election, which was open to multiple candidates, and the runoff between the top two on May 12, there was a significant disparity in the number of people voting Republican in the later election.
Assuming these polling results from Wikipedia are accurate, if you add up the percentage of the votes for all Democrats versus the percentage of the votes for all Republicans in the March 3, 2020 election, it was roughly a tie between people voting Democratic and people voting Republican. (About 50% voted Republican, and about 50% voted Democratic.) If you look at the results on May 12, the Republican won by about 9%. That is significant.
The only difference between March 3, 2020 and May 12, 2020 was COVID-19, and the California shelter-in-place orders, which started around the middle of March. This is about as close as you can get to a “laboratory experiment” on discerning the desires of the voters from an election.
Now, this was not a “true blue” Democratic District. Up until 2018. it had been Republican. Additionally, it’s possible some faction of the Democratic party disliked the Democratic candidate so much on May 12 that they stayed home. Also, how that translates to the rest of the state, especially now that the government has eased up on the shelter in place orders, I don’t know. (I’m not holding my breath on California “turning Red”, but one can hope.) I think it is very possible this was a rebuke against Governor Newsom and the Democratic restrictions on liberty over COVID-19. There’s hope for a America yet.
