2000 United States presidential election in California explained

Election Name:2000 United States presidential election in California
Country:California
Type:presidential
Ongoing:no
Previous Election:1996 United States presidential election in California
Previous Year:1996
Next Election:2004 United States presidential election in California
Next Year:2004
Turnout:70.94% (of registered voters) 5.41 pp
51.92% (of eligible voters) 0.64 pp[1]
Election Date:November 7, 2000
Image1:Al Gore, Vice President of the United States, official portrait 1994 (a).jpg
Nominee1:Al Gore
Party1:Democratic Party (United States)
Home State1:Tennessee
Running Mate1:Joe Lieberman
Electoral Vote1:54
Popular Vote1:5,861,203
Percentage1:53.45%
Nominee2:George W. Bush
Party2:Republican Party (United States)
Home State2:Texas
Running Mate2:Dick Cheney
Electoral Vote2:0
Popular Vote2:4,567,429
Percentage2:41.65%
Map Size:400px
President
Before Election:Bill Clinton
Before Party:Democratic Party (United States)
After Election:George W. Bush
After Party:Republican Party (United States)

The 2000 United States presidential election in California took place on November 7, 2000, as part of the wider 2000 United States presidential election. Voters chose 54 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

California was won by the Democratic ticket of Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee and Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut by 11.8% points over the Republican ticket of Texas Governor George W. Bush and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney of Wyoming.

The state hosted the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles and was slightly contested by both candidates due to a large Hispanic population and a large independent and moderate base surrounding San Diego and Sacramento's suburbs. This was the first time since 1880 in which a winning Republican presidential candidate lost California, and the first time ever that a losing Democrat won a majority of the vote in the state. As of the 2020 presidential election, Bush is the last Republican candidate to carry Alpine and Mono counties in a presidential election. This was also the first time since 1976 that California did not back the candidate who won the overall presidential election as well.

Bush became the first ever Republican to win the White House without carrying Imperial County, as well as the first to do so without carrying Santa Barbara County since Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the first to do so without carrying Monterey County since William McKinley in 1896, the first to do so without carrying San Benito County since William McKinley in 1900, and the first to do so without carrying Napa or Sacramento Counties since Richard Nixon in 1968. He also became the first nominee of either party to win the White House without receiving at least a million votes from Los Angeles County since this county first gave any nominee a million votes, in 1952. This feat would be reprised by Donald Trump in 2016.

California was one of ten states that backed George H. W. Bush for president in 1988 that didn't back George W. Bush in either 2000 or 2004.

Primaries

Results

2000 United States presidential election in California[2] [3]
PartyCandidateVotesPercentageElectoral votes
DemocraticAlbert A. Gore Jr. and Joseph Lieberman5,861,20353.45%54
RepublicanGeorge W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney4,567,42941.65%0
GreenRalph Nader and Winona LaDuke418,7073.82%0
LibertarianHarry Browne45,5200.42%0
ReformPat Buchanan44,9870.41%0
American IndependentHoward Phillips17,0420.16%0
Natural LawJohn Hagelin10,9340.10%0
style=width: 3px" write-inDavid McReynolds280.00%0
Other write-in60.00%0
Invalid or blank votes177,0101.59%—
Totals10,965,856100.00%54
Voter turnout70.94%—

By county

CountyAl Gore
Democratic		George W. Bush
Republican		Ralph Nader
Green		Various candidates
Other parties		MarginTotal votes cast
%%%%%
Alameda342,88969.36%119,27924.13%27,4995.56%4,6690.95%223,61045.23%494,336
Alpine26545.22%28147.95%254.27%152.56%-16-2.73%586
Amador5,90638.19%8,76656.69%5843.78%2081.34%-2,860-18.50%15,464
Butte31,33837.43%45,58454.45%5,7276.84%1,0721.28%-14,246-17.02%83,721
Calaveras7,09337.58%10,59956.15%8634.57%3211.69%-3,506-18.57%18,876
Colusa1,74531.22%3,62964.92%1512.70%651.16%-1,884-33.70%5,590
Contra Costa224,33858.81%141,37337.06%13,0673.43%2,7000.71%82,96521.75%381,478
Del Norte3,11737.58%4,52654.57%4855.85%1662.00%-1,409-16.99%8,294
El Dorado26,22036.35%42,04558.29%3,0134.18%8581.19%-15,825-21.94%72,136
Fresno95,05943.05%117,34253.14%6,5412.96%1,8930.86%-22,283-10.09%220,835
Glenn2,49828.68%5,79566.53%2683.08%1501.72%-3,297-37.85%8,711
Humboldt24,85144.40%23,21941.48%7,10012.68%8021.44%1,6322.92%55,972
Imperial15,48953.53%12,52443.28%6082.10%3161.09%2,96510.25%28,937
Inyo2,65233.93%4,71360.31%3444.40%1061.35%-2,061-26.38%7,815
Kern66,00336.20%110,66360.70%3,4741.91%2,1681.18%-44,660-24.50%182,308
Kings11,04138.97%16,37757.80%5672.00%3501.24%-5,336-18.83%28,335
Lake10,71751.23%8,69941.58%1,2656.05%2381.14%2,0189.65%20,919
Lassen2,98228.17%7,08066.88%3393.20%1851.75%-4,098-38.71%10,586
Los Angeles1,710,50563.47%871,93032.35%83,7313.11%28,9881.08%838,57531.12%2,695,154
Madera11,65034.89%20,28360.74%1,0803.23%3821.14%-8,633-25.85%33,395
Marin79,13564.26%34,87228.32%8,2896.73%8590.70%44,26335.94%123,155
Mariposa2,81634.88%4,72758.55%3794.69%1521.88%-1,911-23.67%8,074
Mendocino16,63448.34%12,27235.66%5,05114.68%4531.32%4,36212.68%34,410
Merced22,72645.08%26,10251.77%1,1662.31%4240.84%-3,376-6.69%50,418
Modoc94523.07%2,96972.47%1222.98%611.49%-2,024-49.28%4,107
Mono1,78840.91%2,29652.53%2305.26%571.30%-508-11.62%4,371
Monterey67,61857.53%43,76137.23%5,0594.30%1,0960.93%23,85720.30%117,534
Napa28,09754.32%20,63339.89%2,4714.78%5231.01%7,46414.43%51,724
Nevada17,67037.22%25,99854.76%3,2876.92%5241.10%-8,328-17.54%47,479
Orange391,81940.36%541,29955.75%26,8332.76%10,9541.13%-149,480-15.39%970,905
Placer42,44936.04%69,83559.28%4,4493.78%1,0610.90%-27,386-23.24%117,799
Plumas3,45833.25%6,34360.98%4564.38%1441.38%-2,885-27.73%10,401
Riverside202,57644.90%231,95551.42%11,6782.59%4,9181.09%-29,379-6.52%451,127
Sacramento212,79249.31%195,61945.33%17,6594.09%5,4801.27%17,1733.98%431,550
San Benito9,13154.25%7,01541.68%5353.18%1500.89%2,11612.57%16,831
San Bernardino214,74947.21%221,75748.75%11,7752.59%6,6121.45%-7,008-1.54%454,893
San Diego437,66645.66%475,73649.63%33,9793.54%11,2531.17%-38,070-3.97%958,634
San Francisco241,57875.54%51,49616.10%24,8287.76%1,8840.59%190,08259.44%319,786
San Joaquin79,77647.70%81,77348.90%4,1952.51%1,4850.89%-1,997-1.20%167,239
San Luis Obispo44,52640.89%56,85952.22%6,5235.99%9780.90%-12,333-11.33%108,886
San Mateo166,75764.29%80,29630.95%10,4334.02%1,9130.73%86,46133.34%259,399
Santa Barbara73,41147.37%71,49346.13%8,6645.59%1,4060.91%1,9181.24%154,974
Santa Clara332,49060.66%188,75034.44%19,0723.48%7,8171.43%143,74026.22%548,129
Santa Cruz66,61861.48%29,62727.34%10,84410.01%1,2611.16%36,99134.14%108,350
Shasta20,12730.25%43,27865.04%2,1313.20%1,0081.51%-23,151-34.79%66,544
Sierra54029.24%1,17263.45%864.66%492.65%-632-34.21%1,847
Siskiyou6,32331.90%12,19861.55%8724.40%4262.15%-5,875-29.65%19,819
Solano75,11657.02%51,60439.17%3,8692.94%1,1460.87%23,51217.85%131,735
Sonoma117,29559.54%63,52932.25%14,3247.27%1,8580.94%53,76627.29%197,006
Stanislaus56,44844.01%67,18852.38%3,3982.65%1,2330.96%-10,740-8.37%128,267
Sutter8,41631.68%17,35065.31%5942.24%2040.77%-8,934-33.63%26,564
Tehama6,50731.20%13,27063.63%6973.34%3801.82%-6,763-32.43%20,854
Trinity1,93233.33%3,34057.62%3966.83%1292.23%-1,408-24.29%5,797
Tulare33,00636.75%54,07060.20%1,8342.04%9081.01%-21,064-23.45%89,818
Tuolumne9,35939.44%13,17255.51%9494.00%2471.04%-3,813-16.07%23,727
Ventura133,25847.14%136,17348.17%10,2353.62%3,0261.07%-2,915-1.03%282,692
Yolo33,74754.93%23,05737.53%4,1076.69%5250.85%10,69017.40%61,436
Yuba5,54634.39%9,83861.00%5073.14%2361.46%-4,292-26.61%16,127
Total 5,861,20353.45%4,567,42941.65%418,7073.82%118,5171.09%1,293,77411.80%10,965,856

Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican

By congressional district

Gore won 33 of 52 congressional districts, including four held by Republicans while Bush won two held by Democrats.

DistrictBushGoreRepresentative
41%50%Mike Thompson
59%34%Wally Herger
51%44%Doug Ose
58%37%John Doolittle
37%57%Bob Matsui
30%62%Lynn Woolsey
27%69%George Miller
15%77%Nancy Pelosi
12%79%Barbara Lee
45%51%Ellen Tauscher
50%47%Richard Pombo
27%67%Tom Lantos
30%66%Pete Stark
32%62%Anna Eshoo
38%57%Tom Campbell
Mike Honda
32%64%Zoe Lofgren
33%60%Sam Farr
53%44%Gary Condit
58%38%George Radanovich
48%50%Cal Dooley
64%33%Bill Thomas
49%45%Lois Capps
47%48%Elton Gallegly
38%58%Brad Sherman
51%45%Buck McKeon
25%70%Howard Berman
41%53%Jim Rogan
Adam Schiff
47%49%David Dreier
22%72%Henry Waxman
19%75%Xavier Becerra
27%69%Matthew G. Martínez
Hilda Solis
13%83%Diane Watson
15%83%Lucille Roybal-Allard
30%67%Grace Napolitano
12%86%Maxine Waters
44%51%Steven T. Kuykendall
Jane Harman
15%83%Juanita Millender-McDonald
37%58%Steve Horn
53%43%Ed Royce
56%39%Jerry Lewis
50%47%Gary Miller
39%57%Joe Baca
52%44%Ken Calvert
49%47%Mary Bono
56%40%Dana Rohrabacher
42%54%Loretta Sánchez
58%39%Christopher Cox
60%36%Ron Packard
Darrell Issa
42%53%Brian Bilbray
Susan Davis
37%59%Bob Filner
55%41%Duke Cunningham
54%41%Duncan Hunter

Analysis

Vice President Al Gore easily defeated Texas Governor George W. Bush in California. Bush campaigned several times in California, but it didn't seem to help as Gore defeated Bush by 11.8%. Bush did make substantial headway in the Gold Country, Shasta Cascade, and parts of the Central Valley, flipping San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced Counties (all of which had voted for Bill Clinton twice) and winning the highest vote share of any presidential nominee in decades (exceeding California natives Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan) in Shasta, Madera, Tehama, Siskiyou, Lassen, Plumas, Modoc, and Sierra Counties. He also flipped San Bernardino County, his largest county flip in the state (and nationally), as well as Ventura County; but he underperformed in all the large, then-historically Republican counties of Southern California and the Central Coast (San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo) relative to Bob Dole's performance in 1996, losing Santa Barbara outright despite that Dole had lost it by only 4.5%.[4] In the then-Republican bastion of Orange County, Al Gore became the first Democrat to crack 40% since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide.

Furthermore, Gore overwhelmingly won Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the state and the country, and swept the Bay Area (where Bush's father had won Napa County in 1988, the last time a Republican had won the state). In San Francisco, although Bush did improve slightly on Dole's vote share, he posted the second-worst showing of any major-party nominee (after Dole) since John Davis in 1924. Even though Green Party nominee Ralph Nader broke into double digits in the North Coast counties of Mendocino and Humboldt, as well as in Santa Cruz County, these factors helped Gore win statewide by a little over 1.3 million votes, greater than his national popular vote margin over Bush (although less than the raw vote margin whereby he won New York).

Apart from Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative former adviser to Presidents Nixon and Reagan and two-time Republican presidential candidate, was on the ballot as the nominee of the Reform Party, which had been founded by Ross Perot in 1994. However, as in most of the rest of the country, Buchanan fell well short of Perot's 1996 performance in California, cracking 1% only in Glenn County (and in tiny Alpine County, where he received eight votes). Buchanan was essentially a non-factor, and California was projected for Gore upon poll-closing, at 11 PM EST.

Electors

See main article: List of 2000 United States presidential electors.

Technically the voters of California cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. California is allocated 54 electors because it has 52 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 54 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all 54 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.

The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 18, 2000,[5] to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.

The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All were pledged to and voted for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman:[6]

  1. Sunil Aghi
  2. Amy Arambula
  3. Rachel Binah
  4. R. Stephen Bollinger
  5. Roberts Braden
  6. Laura Karolina Capps
  7. Anni Chung
  8. Joseph A. Cislowski
  9. Sheldon Cohn
  10. Thor Emblem
  11. Elsa Favila
  12. John Freidenrich
  13. Cecelia Fuentes
  14. Glen Fuller
  15. James Garrison
  16. Sally Goehring
  17. Florence Gold
  18. Jill S. Hardy
  19. Therese Horsting
  20. Georgie Huff
  21. Robert Eugene Hurd
  22. Harriet A. Ingram
  23. Robert Jordan
  24. John Koza
  25. John Laird
  26. N. Mark Lam
  27. Manuel M. Lopez
  28. Henry Lozano
  29. David Mann
  30. Beverly Martin
  31. R. Keith McDonald
  32. Carol D. Norberg
  33. Ron Oberndorfer
  34. Gerard Orozco
  35. Trudy Owens
  36. Gregory S. Pettis
  37. Flo Rene Pickett
  38. Theodore H. Plant
  39. Art Pulaski
  40. Eloise Reyes
  41. Alex Arthur Reza
  42. C. Craig Roberts
  43. Jason Rodríguez
  44. Luis D. Rojas
  45. Howard L. Schock
  46. Lane Sherman
  47. David A. Torres
  48. Larry Trullinger
  49. Angelo K. Tsakopoulos
  50. Richard Valle
  51. Karen Waters
  52. Don Wilcox
  53. William K. Wong
  54. Rosalind Wyman

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Historical Voter Registration and Participation in Statewide General Elections 1910-2018 . California Secretary of State . 2022-05-05.
  2. Web site: Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections - California . 2013-01-07.
  3. Web site: Report of Registration as of October 10, 2000 . 2001-01-07 . 2008-08-10 . . https://web.archive.org/web/20080807045338/http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2000_general/reg.pdf . August 7, 2008 . dead . mdy-all .
  4. Web site: Leip. Dave. 4 November 2020. 2000 Presidential General Election Data - California. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.
  5. Web site: 2000 Post-Election Timeline of Events.
  6. Web site: President Elect - 2000 . 2009-10-24 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120212174238/http://presidentelect.org/e2000.html . 2012-02-12 . dead .

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