Californias Republican party is almost nonexistent. But, why?
A recurring theme raised its head at last weekend's California Republican convention in Los Angeles: How to curtail the party's evaporation in the state. Fifteen years ago, 35 percent of registered voters were Republican. Today, 28 percent are.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), there to rally the crowd (and lay more groundwork for 2016), even cracked a joke about the party's woes, according to the Los Angeles Times. "He said he'd heard that Republicans might have suffered a few recent losses in California, drawing chuckles from a crowd that's grown accustomed to getting clobbered," the paper reported. In a separate column, the Times explored the party's challenges.
What's interesting about California, though, is that voters aren't abandoning the party to become Democrats. They're largely abandoning the party for either third parties -- or for no one.
This isn't a new phenomenon; it's been written about as a national trend in the past. But what's happening in California differs dramatically from trends in other states.
Here's the trend there, according to official records from the California Secretary of State.
Compare that with the much smaller state of Wyoming, which has records going back to the 1960s.
In California, the Republican party is eroding and it's mostly among decline-to-states, the state's I-don't-want-to-choose option. (Though not entirely; more on that below.) In Wyoming, the Democratic party has withered -- and Republicans have seen the entire gain.
Now, look at New York.
New York also has a no-party option, but a decent chunk of the drop in Republican registration has been eaten up by the Democrats -- thanks in large part to a surge in 2008. Since 2004, Republican registration dropped 3.5 points; Democratic registration went up by 3.
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Californias Republican party is almost nonexistent. But, why?