Collapse of California liberalism shown in the U.S. presidential election

The U.S. state of California, home to about 38.9 million people, had a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of $3.9 trillion last year. It is the world's fifth-largest economy, after the U.S., China, Germany, and Japan, and is larger than the GDPs of India, the U.K., and France. This success is thanks to its natural resources, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and prestigious universities such as Stanford, Caltech, UCLA, and UC Berkeley.

However, California is suffering from a brain drain. According to Business Insider, 691,000 people left in 2022 and 2023 alone. Big tech companies such as Tesla, Oracle, HP, and Palantir have moved their headquarters to other states. The cited reasons include unsafe neighborhoods, over-regulation, mandating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, high taxes, and an expensive cost of living.

Many point to Proposition 47, passed by California voters in 2014, as the starting point. It reclassified low-level crimes, such as theft under $950 and simple drug possession, as misdemeanors for first-time offenders. The reasons cited for its passage included a lack of jail space and the state's deteriorating finances, but many feared that it would “encourage crime.”

Over the next decade, looting and drug trafficking surged across the state. As long as there were no casualties, criminals had nothing to lose. Even if they were caught, they were often released without bail. Public discontent soared, and those who couldn't tolerate it fled the state.

In the meantime, Proposition 47 was followed by Proposition 36, which sought to reclassify crimes categorized as misdemeanors under Proposition 47 back to felonies. The vote on Proposition 36, held on the same day as the presidential election, passed with 69% of the vote. It was a harsh judgment by the people, who were fed up with the reality that the law seemed to encourage crime rather than punish it.

As these results show, California, once a Democratic stronghold and the home of the American progressive movement, is no longer the same. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, received 20.5 percentage points more support than President-elect Donald Trump.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidates in the 2016 and 2020 elections, won California by margins of 30.1 and 29.2 percentage points, respectively, over Mr. Trump. In contrast, Vice President Harris, who was born, raised, and politically active in California, received significantly fewer votes than these two Democratic candidates with no personal ties to the state.

As San Francisco's district attorney and later as California's attorney general, Harris advocated for police budget cuts. During her 2020 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, she stated that she would not prosecute most illegal immigrants. Although she has attempted to adopt a more conservative stance on some policies, such as her approach to fossil fuel energy, to appeal to centrist voters in this presidential election, she is undeniably a progressive politician at her core—a “California liberal.”

Harris received fewer Electoral College votes than President-elect Trump, as well as losing the national popular vote in this election. Democrats also suffered losses to Republicans in the House, Senate, and gubernatorial races. While many factors contributed to Harris' defeat, and she can't shoulder all the blame, one takeaway is clear: being a “California liberal” may resonate in some progressive areas, but it faces significant challenges in national elections.