Orange County’s final vote count reveals Republicans voted for Democrats, $69 per House vote and historic turnout
By now, this much is well known: Orange County’s 2018 election was momentous as voters swept Republicans from Congress in the one-time conservative stronghold, electing Democrats and reshaping the county’s political landscape.
But as the final vote counts were certified late last week, the closing tallies also told new stories of what happened during and before the Nov. 6 vote. That includes revealing exactly where Democrats managed to snag right-leaning voters and showing just how much money was spent per vote in House contests that saw unprecedented influxes of cash.
Here are a few early takeaways and oddities that helped make this election historic.
High turnout
This year’s contest saw Orange County have its highest proportional voter turnout of any midterm contest since 1970 – the election that followed President Richard Nixon’s inauguration, when the nation was embroiled in the Vietnam War.
In all, 71 percent of the county’s registered voters cast ballots this cycle, seemingly driven by the region’s four hypercompetitive House contests where Democrats flipped GOP-held seats. That’s an exceptionally high turnout for midterms, which often draw significantly less attention than presidential elections. The level of participation this cycle was actually higher than in the 2012 election, when 67 percent of the county’s registered voters cast ballots. It also dwarfs the 2014 midterm when only 45 percent of registered voters turned out.
Orange County’s voter turnout also was notably higher than the counties of Los Angeles (58 percent), Riverside (projected to be 59 percent), and San Bernardino (projected to be 60 percent).
O.C. votes for a Democratic governor
For the first time since Gov. Jerry Brown’s re-election in 1978, Orange County voters favored a Democrat for governor.
Gavin Newsom, who won the governorship statewide by a large margin, earned 50.1 percent of the vote in the county, slimly outperforming Republican John Cox. But in Orange County, even that narrow advantage represents a big change.
To put Newsom’s local victory into perspective, during Brown’s two most recent gubernatorial runs, he lost to Republicans by an average of 15 percentage points in the county. And when Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger won re-election to the governorship in 2006, he received an overwhelming 70 percent of votes cast in Orange County.
Republicans voted for Democrats
In a post-election analysis from Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County, about how Democrats had managed such substantial victories in the region, one explanation from the local GOP boss stood out: “Significant numbers of Republicans we turned out, look to have voted Democrat,” he wrote.
The final election results, in fact, confirm that a high number of right-leaning voters cast ballots for Democratic congressional candidates.
Despite Cox’s loss in Orange County, he considerably outperformed the region’s Republican House candidates. A closer look suggests that at least 47,000 of the county voters who chose Cox for governor either picked a Democrat for Congress or opted to abstain from the House vote.
Many of the split tickets came from the county’s coastal region, with the highest concentration found in the 48th District, where GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher lost his re-election bid, according to an analysis by the Orange County Register.
In that district – the most conservative House seat in the county by voter registration – numerous precincts in Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach gave Rohrabacher 100 fewer votes than Cox. Democrat congressman-elect Harley Rouda, a former Republican, won that race.
Prior to Rohrabacher’s loss, the 30-year congressman has been mired in controversy in recent months. That has included his name surfacing several times for his close ties to Moscow amid the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In the southern part of the county, voters also frequently favored Cox to GOP House candidate Diane Harkey, a member of the State Board of Equalization.
In fact, the only Republican congressional candidate in the county to outperform Cox in some precincts was former Assemblywoman Young Kim, who has deep ties to Fullerton and Buena Park. In portions of those cities, Kim seemingly split ballots in the other direction – winning votes from people who also voted for Newsom.
$69 per vote
This was the most expensive election in Orange County’s history, with more than $122 million spent in just the four competitive House races. In total, 1.78 million people voted in those contests in the primary and general elections, including voters in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties
That means the campaigns and outside groups cumulatively spent an average of nearly $69 per vote in those four congressional contests – enough money to buy each voter a weekday admission and parking to Knott’s Berry Farm.
Most of the spending came from Democrats, who paid princely sums to help win the seats. Considering that many voters likely already knew who they’d vote for, the money can be viewed another way: several hundred dollars or more for every swing-vote or low-propensity voter that helped Democrats win the election.
Youth vote
It’s unclear just how important young voters were in helping Democrats win elections, but early clues suggest college-age voters gave the left a sizeable boost.
In just six precincts in and around UC Irvine, Democratic congresswoman-elect Katie Porter won 91 percent of ballots, beating two-term GOP Rep. Mimi Walters by 5,300 votes. Though those districts accounted for only 2 percent of all ballots cast in the race, they supplied Porter with nearly half her winning margin. Before being elected to represent the 45th Congressional District, Porter was a UC Irvine law professor.
Democrats this cycle were particularly focused on registering and encouraging young people to vote, especially around college campuses, where voters skew liberal.
Hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer – one of the largest individual Democratic donors in the nation and a possible 2020 presidential contender – spent $3.5 million via his political action committee, NextGen America, on youth voter outreach in California. Many of those efforts were focused on Orange County, particularly UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton and Saddleback College.
Following the election, NextGen reported that turnout among voters ages 18 to 34 increased more than tenfold in two of the college-adjacent precincts they targeted. In one precinct by Cal State Fullerton – which factored in the close contest for the 39th Congressional District, more than 1,000 young voters cast ballots this cycle, 11 times higher than in the last midterm. At one UC Irvine precinct, the PAC said youth voting was 14 times higher.
Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data, noted that in the 2016 election, 45 percent of late absentee and provisional ballots in California came from young voters. If that pattern held true for this election, it could mean that the youth vote played a sizable role in Democrats’ numerous post-election comebacks, which saw late ballots trend left, defeating Republicans who had led on Election Day.