Heard We Got The Central Valley Too

The story of the 2008 election is going to be the epic collapse of the Republican Party in traditional strongholds.

The Republican Party, which overtook Valley Democrats in voter registration totals eight years ago, is losing ground for the first time in at least a decade.

After peaking just ahead of the 2004 presidential election, Republican registration numbers are down in Fresno, Tulare, Kings, Madera, Mariposa and Merced counties.

The GOP's decline is most obvious in Fresno County, where the losses have turned into an avalanche, even as the party gears up its efforts to keep the White House in GOP hands by electing Arizona Sen. John McCain as president.
The most recent voter registration numbers show the Democrats are closing the gap and are now fewer than 9,000 voters behind the Republicans.

At the peak in 2004, GOP registrations were ahead by more than 23,500 voters.

This will obviously help in AD-30, where Fran Florez is facing Danny Gilmore to keep Nicole Parra's seat in Democratic hands. But this is a nationwide and statewide shift that is generational in nature.

In Riverside County, Republicans have lost close to 34,000 voters since October 2004; in Orange County, an 18 percentage point Republican Party lead in 2004 is now at 14 percentage points.

Bob Mulholland, campaign adviser to the California Democratic Party, points out that Democrats picked up almost 75% of the more than 411,000 new voter registrations statewide between voter-registration reports filed Jan. 22 and May 19.

During that same time, close to 21% of new registrations were decline-to-state. Republicans picked up just 3.6% of the new voters.

I think that in particular, failed conservative policies have most adversely impacted Republican areas. The collapsing home market as a result of "inmates running the asylum" in the lending markets has hit the exurbs hard. Job loss is most keenly affecting the areas where jobs are newer to arrive. And of course high energy prices hurt those with long commutes. The exurbs, the fast-growing counties, the greatest strength for Republicans in 2004, are massively turning to the Democrats. That leaves Democrats with a noticeably bigger tent, and we have to recognize that as an issue moving forward, but for now, this cratering of Republican numbers is truly a sight, as stark a picture as it was right after Watergate in 1974.