cawacko
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People changing parties isn’t new. And this happens to be Bay Area focused, so the numbers are small. What stands out are the demographics, specifically Latino, Black, and Asian voters.
Democrats have long talked about demographics being destiny, the idea that a more diverse America benefits their party. They still win the minority vote overall, but those margins have started to narrow.
This could just be a blip, but the fact that the San Francisco Chronicle is covering it suggests there’s more to it. It’s part of a broader pattern we’ve seen nationally, but the Bay Area isn’t usually where you expect to see it.
Immigration attorney Karina Velasquez is an unlikely Republican convert.
The longtime Democrat immigrated to the U.S. in her 20s to escape the oppressive regime in her native Venezuela. She voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and campaigned for Joe Biden in 2020.
But during the Biden presidency, she became so disillusioned with the Democratic Party’s stances on repeat offenders and immigration that she switched her party affiliation in January.
“I became a Republican because I’m more concerned the California Democrats are turning left,” said Velasquez, who lives in San Francisco. “By me becoming a Republican, I’ll become a spokesperson for moderation.”
Erik Nuno Velasquez is part of a recent red shift in San Francisco and California, where the Republican Party has seen a steady rise in support since 2024, according to voter registration trends. Though some have been drawn in by Trump, many of these voters aren’t driven by MAGA politics but economic concerns and a loss of trust in the Democratic Party.
The result was a sharp partisan swing in 2024, according to election results. Vice President Kamala Harris won the state handily, but her margin of victory (20%) was 9 points smaller than Joe Biden’s in 2020 (29%). That was the third-largest swing away from Democrats of any state.
Hispanic voters in particular fled the Democratic Party, according to a Chronicle analysis of election returns, census data, and voter data.
In fact, an analysis at the voting precinct level showed that ethnicity — to a much greater degree than income, education or even birth in the United States — correlated with a shift in voter preference for Trump in 2024. The share of Hispanic residents in a precinct was most strongly associated with a rightward shift, followed by the share of Asians.
That is a concerning sign for Democrats, who have long depended on Black, Asian and Hispanic voters.
Nationwide, Hispanic voters played a major role in helping President Trump secure his 2024 presidential victory, though recent polling indicated Trump’s approval rating among this group has plummeted.
Although California has about almost two times more registered Democrats than Republicans, voters in the state have, on balance, shifted away from identifying with the Democratic party in the past year, though at a relatively modest scale.
The Chronicle examined data from political data firms that suggested that tens of thousands more California voters have switched their voter registration to Republican than to Democrat in the twelve months through August.
That data also suggests that at all income levels, Hispanic voters were overrepresented among those who switched to the Republican Party, relative to their share of the general population.
Registration data from the California Secretary of State’s Office shows an even clearer trend: There were 289,678 more registered Republicans this September compared to September 2024. There were only 88,322 more registered Democrats in the same time period. (Those figures include both party switchers and new registrants.)
As next year’s midterm elections approach, these trends could present an opening for Republicans hoping to flip several California congressional seats that they narrowly lost in 2024.
Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic party, dismissed the Republican gains and said that California Democrats won four of six competitive congressional seats in 2024, hold every statewide office and command supermajorities in the state legislature.
“MAGA Republicans pretending they’re gaining ground in California isn’t strategy, it’s fantasy,” Hicks said.
David Cushman, chair of the San Joaquin County Republican Party, said he thought economic concerns were the biggest issues that caused voters, including Hispanics, to switch parties. San Joaquin is one of the ten California counties Trump flipped last year.
“After going through the Biden economy, we went through a point where it felt harder than ever to make ends meet,” said Cushman, who works in hospitality at a marina in Stockton.
Mike Madrid, a Republican political strategist and Latino voting expert, also said Latino voters moved away from the Democratic Party during the 2024 election primarily because of affordability concerns, including high inflation.
“The Democratic Party continues to be of the orthodoxy and the belief that nonwhite voters fundamentally view the world through a racial and ethnic lens,” he said. “Their problem is Latinos are less and less likely to do so every day. People are third generation now. They’re U.S. born.”
The problem for Democrats goes beyond Latino voters. Oakland resident Nedu Anigbogu, 25, said he realizes that as a young Black man, he’s statistically likely to be a Democrat, but he's never registered with the party. On a recent Thursday evening, the self-described independent signed onto a Zoom call to learn more about a local Republican group called the Briones Society.
“Why is a 25-year-old Black male who went to UC Berkeley even on a call for Briones?” Anigbogu told the Chronicle. “I can understand the wheels turning.”
Anigbogu said doesn’t think the Democratic Party has produced an “aspirational figure for young men.”
He said he’s intrigued by the Briones Society, a center-right group that describes itself as believing in “the GOP of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.” Its slate of delegates claimed control of the San Francisco Republican Party’s local leadership body during the 2024 primaries.
Co-Founder Bill Jackson now serves as the chair of the San Francisco Republican Party and heads the local GOP with an overt local focus.
“Obviously, Trump is very controversial and overall, not popular in San Francisco and to a lesser extent California,” he said. “So our strategy from the beginning has been: don’t talk about that.”
That has won over new Republicans, including Velasquez, who said she liked that the Briones Society endorsed Democrats, including Mayor Daniel Lurie.
Local issues are what drew Winnie Chen to the GOP. Born and raised in San Francisco Chinatown, Chen said his family leaned Democratic.
“I was always told to vote Democrat because they look out for the poor and disenfranchised,” said Chen, who works as an in-home caregiver and Uber driver.
But around 2019, he started becoming concerned about crime and homelessness in the city. He learned about the “homeless industrial complex.” Critics of California’s homelessness policies use the term to describe the network of taxpayer-funded homelessness nonprofits that they say don’t do enough to reduce homelessness.
But supporters of existing policies point to good news: After decades of an escalating crisis, some California counties have recently seen a double-digit reduction in homelessness.
Chen officially registered with the Republican Party in 2020 and voted for Trump the same year. He said he supports Trump’s latest policies, including tariffs, which he thinks will “help shore up American industries.” He argued that a 10% to 20% tariff is “not going to crash the economy.” Trump has imposed tariffs of 10% to 50% on more than 90 countries. Economic consensus is largely that most costs will be borne by consumers, as was the case in Trump’s first term.
The chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, Nancy Tung, said in response to the modest gain in Republican registrations that the Democrats need to pay attention and “really promote a message that the Democratic Party is responsive and inclusive.”
Tung, who works as a prosecutor, said some people might have an “outdated notion” of where the party stands on public safety issues. She pointed to record lows in violent crime in San Francisco under the Lurie administration, though crime has dropped in many cities nationwide since 2024 and began to drop last year to a two-decade low before Lurie took office. Tung also pointed to the “sea change” in party policies when the slate of moderate Democrats like her wrested control of the local party from progressives last March.
In San Francisco, disaffection with Democrats goes beyond public safety. Second-generation American Carlos Hernandez — raised by lifelong Democrats in the Mission District — said his 2015 party shift was related to the difficulties of being a landlord.
Hernandez remembered how excited he was in 2008 volunteering for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, but those feelings soured when he was sued by tenants who lived in a building he inherited. The case was eventually resolved when Hernandez settled and sold the building in 2018.
He said he thought that San Francisco is governed by the idea that “the tenant is always right. Screw the landlord.”
He was drawn to the Republican values of “agency,” he said, having worked his way through college at Stanford to graduate with zero debts.. He liked Trump’s “fighting stance,” he said.
“I think that’s what appeals to Hispanic men, his bravado,” said Hernandez. “Hispanic men, legal or not, have a great work ethic and extreme pride, and they look down on those who don’t.”
“Those who are here legally are the only ones who should be here,” he said, adding he felt it’s risky to express such a controversial opinion in San Francisco. “We’re diverse in so many ways, except diversity of thought.”
Still, Trump’s popularity among some Hispanic voters has waned somewhat in the aftermath of tariffs and an aggressive immigration crackdown.
“This may be the shortest political honeymoon in history,” Madrid, the Republican strategist, said.
Democrats have long talked about demographics being destiny, the idea that a more diverse America benefits their party. They still win the minority vote overall, but those margins have started to narrow.
This could just be a blip, but the fact that the San Francisco Chronicle is covering it suggests there’s more to it. It’s part of a broader pattern we’ve seen nationally, but the Bay Area isn’t usually where you expect to see it.
These Bay Area residents left the Democratic Party. Here’s why they’re joining Republicans
Immigration attorney Karina Velasquez is an unlikely Republican convert.
The longtime Democrat immigrated to the U.S. in her 20s to escape the oppressive regime in her native Venezuela. She voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and campaigned for Joe Biden in 2020.
But during the Biden presidency, she became so disillusioned with the Democratic Party’s stances on repeat offenders and immigration that she switched her party affiliation in January.
“I became a Republican because I’m more concerned the California Democrats are turning left,” said Velasquez, who lives in San Francisco. “By me becoming a Republican, I’ll become a spokesperson for moderation.”
Erik Nuno Velasquez is part of a recent red shift in San Francisco and California, where the Republican Party has seen a steady rise in support since 2024, according to voter registration trends. Though some have been drawn in by Trump, many of these voters aren’t driven by MAGA politics but economic concerns and a loss of trust in the Democratic Party.
The result was a sharp partisan swing in 2024, according to election results. Vice President Kamala Harris won the state handily, but her margin of victory (20%) was 9 points smaller than Joe Biden’s in 2020 (29%). That was the third-largest swing away from Democrats of any state.
Hispanic voters in particular fled the Democratic Party, according to a Chronicle analysis of election returns, census data, and voter data.
In fact, an analysis at the voting precinct level showed that ethnicity — to a much greater degree than income, education or even birth in the United States — correlated with a shift in voter preference for Trump in 2024. The share of Hispanic residents in a precinct was most strongly associated with a rightward shift, followed by the share of Asians.
California precincts with a higher Hispanic share shifted more to Trump
That is a concerning sign for Democrats, who have long depended on Black, Asian and Hispanic voters.
Nationwide, Hispanic voters played a major role in helping President Trump secure his 2024 presidential victory, though recent polling indicated Trump’s approval rating among this group has plummeted.
Although California has about almost two times more registered Democrats than Republicans, voters in the state have, on balance, shifted away from identifying with the Democratic party in the past year, though at a relatively modest scale.
The Chronicle examined data from political data firms that suggested that tens of thousands more California voters have switched their voter registration to Republican than to Democrat in the twelve months through August.
That data also suggests that at all income levels, Hispanic voters were overrepresented among those who switched to the Republican Party, relative to their share of the general population.
Registration data from the California Secretary of State’s Office shows an even clearer trend: There were 289,678 more registered Republicans this September compared to September 2024. There were only 88,322 more registered Democrats in the same time period. (Those figures include both party switchers and new registrants.)
As next year’s midterm elections approach, these trends could present an opening for Republicans hoping to flip several California congressional seats that they narrowly lost in 2024.
Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic party, dismissed the Republican gains and said that California Democrats won four of six competitive congressional seats in 2024, hold every statewide office and command supermajorities in the state legislature.
“MAGA Republicans pretending they’re gaining ground in California isn’t strategy, it’s fantasy,” Hicks said.
David Cushman, chair of the San Joaquin County Republican Party, said he thought economic concerns were the biggest issues that caused voters, including Hispanics, to switch parties. San Joaquin is one of the ten California counties Trump flipped last year.
“After going through the Biden economy, we went through a point where it felt harder than ever to make ends meet,” said Cushman, who works in hospitality at a marina in Stockton.
Mike Madrid, a Republican political strategist and Latino voting expert, also said Latino voters moved away from the Democratic Party during the 2024 election primarily because of affordability concerns, including high inflation.
“The Democratic Party continues to be of the orthodoxy and the belief that nonwhite voters fundamentally view the world through a racial and ethnic lens,” he said. “Their problem is Latinos are less and less likely to do so every day. People are third generation now. They’re U.S. born.”
The problem for Democrats goes beyond Latino voters. Oakland resident Nedu Anigbogu, 25, said he realizes that as a young Black man, he’s statistically likely to be a Democrat, but he's never registered with the party. On a recent Thursday evening, the self-described independent signed onto a Zoom call to learn more about a local Republican group called the Briones Society.
“Why is a 25-year-old Black male who went to UC Berkeley even on a call for Briones?” Anigbogu told the Chronicle. “I can understand the wheels turning.”
Anigbogu said doesn’t think the Democratic Party has produced an “aspirational figure for young men.”
He said he’s intrigued by the Briones Society, a center-right group that describes itself as believing in “the GOP of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.” Its slate of delegates claimed control of the San Francisco Republican Party’s local leadership body during the 2024 primaries.
Co-Founder Bill Jackson now serves as the chair of the San Francisco Republican Party and heads the local GOP with an overt local focus.
“Obviously, Trump is very controversial and overall, not popular in San Francisco and to a lesser extent California,” he said. “So our strategy from the beginning has been: don’t talk about that.”
That has won over new Republicans, including Velasquez, who said she liked that the Briones Society endorsed Democrats, including Mayor Daniel Lurie.
Local issues are what drew Winnie Chen to the GOP. Born and raised in San Francisco Chinatown, Chen said his family leaned Democratic.
“I was always told to vote Democrat because they look out for the poor and disenfranchised,” said Chen, who works as an in-home caregiver and Uber driver.
But around 2019, he started becoming concerned about crime and homelessness in the city. He learned about the “homeless industrial complex.” Critics of California’s homelessness policies use the term to describe the network of taxpayer-funded homelessness nonprofits that they say don’t do enough to reduce homelessness.
But supporters of existing policies point to good news: After decades of an escalating crisis, some California counties have recently seen a double-digit reduction in homelessness.
Chen officially registered with the Republican Party in 2020 and voted for Trump the same year. He said he supports Trump’s latest policies, including tariffs, which he thinks will “help shore up American industries.” He argued that a 10% to 20% tariff is “not going to crash the economy.” Trump has imposed tariffs of 10% to 50% on more than 90 countries. Economic consensus is largely that most costs will be borne by consumers, as was the case in Trump’s first term.
The chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, Nancy Tung, said in response to the modest gain in Republican registrations that the Democrats need to pay attention and “really promote a message that the Democratic Party is responsive and inclusive.”
Tung, who works as a prosecutor, said some people might have an “outdated notion” of where the party stands on public safety issues. She pointed to record lows in violent crime in San Francisco under the Lurie administration, though crime has dropped in many cities nationwide since 2024 and began to drop last year to a two-decade low before Lurie took office. Tung also pointed to the “sea change” in party policies when the slate of moderate Democrats like her wrested control of the local party from progressives last March.
In San Francisco, disaffection with Democrats goes beyond public safety. Second-generation American Carlos Hernandez — raised by lifelong Democrats in the Mission District — said his 2015 party shift was related to the difficulties of being a landlord.
Hernandez remembered how excited he was in 2008 volunteering for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, but those feelings soured when he was sued by tenants who lived in a building he inherited. The case was eventually resolved when Hernandez settled and sold the building in 2018.
He said he thought that San Francisco is governed by the idea that “the tenant is always right. Screw the landlord.”
He was drawn to the Republican values of “agency,” he said, having worked his way through college at Stanford to graduate with zero debts.. He liked Trump’s “fighting stance,” he said.
“I think that’s what appeals to Hispanic men, his bravado,” said Hernandez. “Hispanic men, legal or not, have a great work ethic and extreme pride, and they look down on those who don’t.”
“Those who are here legally are the only ones who should be here,” he said, adding he felt it’s risky to express such a controversial opinion in San Francisco. “We’re diverse in so many ways, except diversity of thought.”
Still, Trump’s popularity among some Hispanic voters has waned somewhat in the aftermath of tariffs and an aggressive immigration crackdown.
“This may be the shortest political honeymoon in history,” Madrid, the Republican strategist, said.