Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.
Shira Stein at The San Francisco Chronicle:
They underperformed with Latinos — but by less than other Democrats.
Although California Democrats weren't alone in seeing decreasing support from Latino voters, they lost less support from that group.
"Everybody underperformed to a certain level with Latino voters. It was just that these House races underperformed less compared to historical norms in these places," Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha said.
Trump won 43% of the Latino vote this election, an 8-point increase from 2020 and 15 points ahead of his 2016 share, according to the Associated Press.
"Even though Republicans made inroads with nonwhite voters, on balance, higher nonwhite turnout still helped Democrats," especially in the cases of Gray, George Whitesides, who ousted Garcia and Derek Tran, who beat Steel, Dave Wasserman, a House race analyst with the Cook Political Report, told the Chronicle.
"California was ground zero because there were just so many districts with so many Latinos living in one place. But we damn sure saw Latinos perform better in places where there's more college-educated Latinos than rural Latinos," which is why Democrats weren't able to defeat Valadao and almost failed to trump Duarte," Rocha said.
Rocha's firm Solidarity Strategies was hired by the House Majority political action committee, a group that focuses on electing House Democrats, to reach Latino voters with culturally competent ads, he said.
Typically, Spanish-language ads are made by consultants on the coasts who "think that they've read some philosophy book about why Latinos and what Latinos care about, and they go and Google translate their English ad into Spanish and call it a day," Rocha said. He said his firm had conversations within targeted districts early on and continued doing so for several months. It began putting out ads as early as March.
"This is not being overly simplistic … the ads being made for Latinos in these districts in Spanish were literally made by Latinos who grew up in some of these districts in California," Rocha said.
He said quality ads can be far more effective than quantity.
"There's a difference in doing good Spanish ads and showing up early, (rather) than dumping a whole bunch of money into Spanish ads in the last 30 days — which is what Kamala did — and losing," he said.
Rocha's ads framed Garcia, whose district has more college-educated Latinos, as an incumbent who wasn't fighting or standing up for workers, and Duarte, who represents a more rural, non-college educated district, "as a product of the big-time D.C. lobbyist and showing him as out-of-touch with the community," he said.
Weaker support from Latino voters, however, did help two incumbent Republicans — Calvert and Valadao — keep their seats.
"There's been a pattern in these races in California — and the pattern stayed true with somebody like David Valadao, let's be clear — that Democrats have been losing ground with Latino voters," Rocha said. This election, however, Democrats put a "new emphasis on trying to stop and fix the Latino problem."
One of the ways Democrats held on to more Latino voters in California and in New York was by going into those states early on.
"We still have more work to do, but at least we figured out ways to stop the bleeding and now start trying to reverse that trend," Rocha said.
Redistricting helped Democrats.
The new California congressional map, which took effect in 2022, disadvantaged Republicans. Steel and Garcia, in particular, ran in friendlier districts in 2020 than in 2024.
"Those districts were made bluer in redistricting, which only took effect in 2022. So had we been talking about this scenario under the 2020 set of lines, they would likely still be members of Congress," Wasserman said.
Whitesides won his race by nearly 8,000 votes, while Tran and Gray's races were much closer. Tran ultimately won by 615 votes and Gray won by 187 votes.
One consultant argued that the narrow margins are the result of the presidential race.
Duarte won his seat in a close race in 2022 — beating Gray by 594 votes.
"Conventional wisdom would have been that he's (a) dead man walking because with presidential turnout, Gray would have a much greater advantage in a seat that Biden won by 11 points," Acosta said.
Democratic turnout in California — and across the country — dropped, however, and that made these races "closer than they probably should have been," Acosta said. About 1.8 million fewer Democrats voted in California this November than in 2020, according to a Chronicle analysis, and about 6.8 million fewer voted for Vice President Kamala Harris than for President Joe Biden in 2020, according to a CNN analysis.
Democrats benefited from a rise in split-ticket voters.
Mike Madrid, a California-based Republican strategist, attributed some of California Democrats' success to a new trend where voters select one party for president and then the opposite for down-ballot races to hold the party in power accountable.
These largely college-educated voters are in favor of a divided government, Madrid said.
"Voters are getting more methodical as their distrust, lack of confidence and dislike for both parties grows. They're becoming much more strategic" and voting to oppose the party in power, he said.
This has been a more common dynamic in Orange County since 2016, but it's expanding nationally. Ticket splitting was infrequent for many years, with red states getting redder and blue states getting bluer. A similar occurrence happened in 2020, but in reverse. Voters elected Joe Biden president, and also voted in a tied Senate and a Democratic-led House.
This yo-yoing of voting behavior will likely continue in future election cycles, Madrid said.
Challengers outraised incumbents and zeroed in on local issues.
As the saying goes, "all politics is local." The Democratic challengers far outraised the Republican incumbents and focused on issues that mattered to their community, rather than national messaging about democracy and gendered issues.
"Each one of these candidates represented and had their own authentic brand that could differentiate themselves from a mold or caricature that Republicans were desperately trying to paint," Orrin Evans, a Democratic consultant who worked on Tran's campaign, told the Chronicle.
Tran outperformed Harris significantly in Little Saigon, a Vietnamese enclave in Orange County, and other areas where Steel had previously been able to outrun Trump's shadow, Wasserman of the Cook Political Report said.
Evans said Tran's campaign "chose not to just do a broad general audience message, but we were continually re-investing in our outreach efforts within the Vietnamese community." The campaign also emphasized his experience as a veteran, consumer attorney and a small business owner, and not just that he was the child of Vietnamese immigrants.
Gray's deep family roots in Merced and long track record on the ballot helped him succeed in a district that wasn't as familiar with Duarte, several analysts said.
Whitesides' campaign turned out minority voters in higher numbers in the Antelope Valley, pushing him to victory, Wasserman said. Whitesides' most effective communication "was that he had created jobs, not just blue-collar jobs, but jobs of the future in the Antelope and Santa Clarita Valley," Evans said. His campaign was also able to use allegations that Garcia sold stocks based on inside information he obtained as a lawmaker to argue Garcia wasn't focused on voters' needs.
The Democratic challengers also had an added boost from their enormous war chests, according to FEC filings.
Gray raised $5.3 million to Duarte's $4 million and Whitesides raised $9.1 million to Garcia's $5.9 million. The only successful challenger to raise less than the incumbent was Tran, who won with just $4.9 million against Steel's $9.1 million.
Will Rollins, the Democrat who failed to oust Calvert, raised $11.3 million — putting him in the top 10 House fundraisers. Rudy Salas, Valadao's failed challenger, raised $5.6 million to Valadao's $4.5 million.
