Are California voters different from the rest of the country?
The state of California is the third biggest American state after Alaska and Texas (Lawrence, 2012). It also has a larger population than other US states (over 35 million), which is why it has the biggest number of districts (53); as a result California’s influence upon presidential elections is high (Electing a US President, 2008). Furthermore, California has the largest number of electors (55) in the country (Electing a US President, 2008). It is the most contemporaneous state and its population is also the most varied; so, “because California has the largest and most diverse state population, it could act as a little laboratory for testing ideas, policies, and even movies (Walker, 1998)”.
Within the recent two decades, the state of California has undergone more remarkable transformations than other American states. It used to be a republican state in terms of voters’ identification, but in the 1990s, California voters’ identification turned from red to blue quite rapidly; therefore, California became a strong democratic state (California, 2008). It is important to mention that ethnic minorities such as Latinos played a significant role in changing the state’s color from red to blue, for the reason that those voters, who belong to California’s ethnic minorities, have always been generally democratic (California, 2008). In the book called California: The Politics of Diversity, we discover that “in 2010, Latinos constituted about a third of the entire state population (Lawrence, 2012, p. 8)”. Taking into consideration the rapid growth of the Hispanic population lately, they are expected to become the biggest ethnic group in the state of California in the next couple of years (Lawrence, 2012). Accordingly, being simply an ethnic minority nowadays, it will become a definite majority in the future of California. In California, there are copious numbers of independent voters who do not identify themselves with Republicans or Democrats, they are mostly young people. The Golden State has about 100 ethnic minority groups, which have different political ideas and expectations (Lawrence, 2012). On the other hand, despite all the differences in their religious beliefs, political ideologies or values and traditions, they are typically Democrats. As a result of California’s great ethnic diversity, its politicians are stuck between the desires of growing minority groups and the expectations of still existing majority of white population.
Consequently, California voters are obviously different from the rest of the country, because they live in a unique atmosphere of cultural diversity and ideological opposition between different ethnic groups. Their differences influence California’s law-making processes and impact the life of the country on the whole. California has such an independent political situation and way of life that it is actually a country inside a country. As David G. Lawrence (2012) declares in his book called California: The Politics of Diversity, California was meant to be varied in terms of its population, since it came …