Is Merced County still a Valley stronghold for Democrats? Here’s what county data shows
Sixteen years ago, when President George W. Bush was elected to his second four-year term in the White House, the voting population in the central San Joaquin Valley looked quite different than it does today.
In Merced County, Democrats have outnumbered Republicans for at least 20 years. But the broader region region that includes Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties has long been considered something of a Republican bastion – a patch of red counties in a predominantly blue state.
Over the course of recent presidential and midterm election cycles since 2004, however, the Valley has become a little less red, and a little bit less of the GOP stronghold than it once was.
In Merced County, for example, Democrats represented about 45% of the electorate in 2004, outnumbering Republicans by only two percentage points as a share of all registered voters. That’s the narrowest margin by one major party over another in the county since 2000
Within a couple of election cycles, however, Democrats in Merced County experienced overall stability in their share of the county’s total registration, while Republicans lost a significant share. By the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats had increased the margin to almost 11 percentage points and continued to consolidate a growing advantage over the past decade.
As President Donald Trump runs for re-election against former Democratic vice president Joe Biden in the November 2020 general election less than a month from now, the Democrats hold an advantage of almost 15 percentage points in voter registration in Merced County.
Over the same 16-year period, the largest gains in registration have come among voters who express no party preference – more than doubling from just over 9% of Merced County voters in 2004 to almost 24% for the current election.
A lighter shade of red
Valley voters have often backed conservative politicians and bucked statewide trends that favor more progressive or liberal candidates and ballot measures.
But that’s changed in recent years. Trump, for example, won the 2016 election based on the Electoral College, but lost in California’s statewide tally as well as in Merced County. Since 2016, however, the registration gap between Democrats and Republicans has narrowed slightly compared to four years ago.
In other Valley counties – Kings, Madera, and Tulare counties – registered Republican voters continue to outnumber Democrats. But those margins have been eroded considerably, shrinking by one-quarter to almost one-half in the four years since Trump was elected.
Democratic gains in the Valley generally mirror what’s happened statewide since 2016. A Sacramento Bee analysis of California’s recent voter registration patterns indicates that the overall number of registered voters has increased sharply in California, and there are more Democrats and Republicans today than four years ago.
But the proportion of voters registered as Republicans has shrunk while the proportion registered as Democrats has grown, along with the proportion of voters refusing to affiliate with either party.
No Party Preference voters growing
Uniformly, the largest gains in registration percentage in Valley counties over the past two decades have been among those voters who identify with no particular political party. “No party preference” voters now represent almost one out of every four registered voters in Merced County, and more than one out of every five voters in Fresno, Kings, Madera and Tulare counties.
Fresno State political science professor Lisa Bryant told The Fresno Bee earlier this year there are several reasons why gains among NPP voters have eclipsed those of both Republicans and Democrats.
“One is that people have an increasingly sort of negative view of political parties themselves, that parties can’t get anything done,” Bryant said. “There’s gridlock, there’s fighting, and that people who identify in one party or another, people might see them negatively. People don’t want that stigma or label attached to them that a party label might carry.”
“So more and more people are saying, ‘I’m independent, I’m just going to vote for the best candidate, I’m not necessarily a partisan,” she added.
Changes in how people register to vote in California, including the expansion of the state’s Motor Voter Program, have also played a role in the rise of NPP registration, Bryant said. “”Now when you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles or any sort of state agency, they ask you if you’re registered to vote and if you want to be opt out of being registered,” she said. “You used to have to opt in.”
“If the state automatically registers you, they cannot choose a party for you, so you get registered as ‘No Party Preference’ by default, then you can go and re-register to change a party preference.”
The number of young registered voters – those age 35 or younger – is also up in each Valley county from four years ago.
In Merced County, those millennial voters numbered 32,698 in 2016. As the 2020 election approaches, that has grown to 41,793 – an increase of 27.8%.
In Fresno County, there were 140,575 in 2016. compared to 166,452 in 2020, an incresae of 18.4%.
In Kings County, there were 15,912 younger voters in 2016, compared to 20,022 in 2020, an increase of almost 26%.
In Madera County, there were 14,925 younger voters in 2016, compared to 20,082 in 2020, an increase of more than 34%.
In Tulare County, there were 46,722 younger voters in 2016, compared to 69,261 in 2020, an increase of more than 48%.
“I think something that’s important to note about millennials is they’re starting to age into those prime voting years,” Bryant said before the March primary. “We know that people 18 to 25 or so, either they’re not that interested in politics because the issues don’t speak to them or they’re busy being in school, starting careers or whatever.”
“We still tend to think of ‘millennials’ as early 20s, but they’re not,” Bryant added. “They’re getting into that 25 to 35 age bracket and starting to have more political investment.”
Changes in local registration
At the community level, among Merced County’s six incorporated cities, Republicans saw advances in their share of overall voter registration in all but two communities – Atwater and Merced – since 2016. Republican voter share rose in Dos Palos, Gustine, Livingston and Los Banos.
Countywide, the number of people registered as Democrats in Merced County grew from 42,435 in 2016 to 48,587 as of last month – an increase of 14.5%, or more than 6,150 people.
Republican registration also increased, from 28,309 in 2016 to 31,999 in 2020. That’s an increase of just over 13%, or just over 3,690 voters.
This story was originally published October 11, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
