See that blue belt around California’s midsection? That’s us, Fresno County
California’s midsection, for decades a Republican stronghold in a heavily Democratic state, has changed colors.
Take a look at the map showing how each of California’s 58 counties voted in the presidential election.
See that blue belt? That’s us. That’s Fresno County, where Joe Biden is getting 53% of the vote compared with Donald Trump’s 45%. (The remaining voted for third-party candidates or wrote-in their own.)
Out of 327,943 total votes, Biden enjoys a 23,953-vote edge over Trump. For Trump to make up that much ground, he’d need almost two-thirds of the remaining 38,340 ballots that Fresno County Clerk Brandi Orth estimated have yet to be counted.
Which seems highly unlikely, if not impossible.
So let’s not equivocate: Fresno County is blue. Even more blue than it was in 2016, when Hillary Clinton received 49.2% of the vote compared to Trump’s 43.2%.
(Each time I mention that Clinton beat Trump in Fresno County, I inevitably get at least one email accusing me of being “fake news.” I reply with a link to the official election results and never hear back. Strange.)
None of this should surprise anyone. After all, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 39.6% to 32.7% margin in Fresno County with another 21.5% of the electorate choosing No Party Preference and 6.2% opting for minor parties.
Assuming all Democrats voted for Biden and all Republicans for Trump — which seems a pretty safe assumption — that means NPP and third-party voters are also skewing Biden’s way. He’s getting a 14.2% bump from those voters compared to Trump’s 12.1%.
I realize this may be hard to process for local Republicans accustomed to getting their way at the ballot box. And in many cases they still do. But Fresno County is blue and getting bluer. The numbers and trends are indisputable.
Fresno County is similar to Orange County, whose voting patterns in the presidential election closely resemble ours. In that former Republican stronghold, Biden leads Trump 53.9% to 44.2%.
Not solely about Trump
How much of our local blue streak is about Trump? To answer that question, I tallied up how Fresno County residents voted in their respective congressional districts.
Here’s what those numbers showed: Out of 274,277 votes cast, 53.8% of them voted for Democratic candidates compared to 46.2% for Republicans.
That 7.7% margin is slightly smaller than the 8.6% edge Biden currently enjoys. Which tells me only a few thousand locals split their ballots between a Democrat presidential candidate and a Republican congressman.
Even though Republicans garnered more Fresno County votes in three of the four districts (Devin Nunes in CA-22, David Valadao in CA-21 and Tom McClintock in CA-4), Jim Costa’s overwhelming majority in CA-16 more than made up for that. Costa received 69.6% of the vote countywide compared to Kevin Cookingham’s 30.4%. Ouch.
Just because Fresno County is blue doesn’t mean voters here are as liberal as other parts of California. Not by a long shot. Biden’s 65.3% statewide majority is proof of that, as does the way we voted on ballot measures.
The most striking example is Proposition 20, which sought to reclassify certain types of theft and fraud from misdemeanors to felonies. It also received heavy backing from Nunes.
On the whole, California voters rejected Proposition 20 by a sizable 62.3% to 37.7% margin. But in Fresno County, the measure is supported by 50.6% of the voters. (With some 84,000 ballots left to be counted, this could flip.)
Between progressive & conservative
Statewide voters also rejected Proposition 15, which would’ve increased property taxes on commercial buildings, 51.3% to 48.7%. Fresno County, meanwhile, voted “no” at a 59.6% clip.
There’s more. Proposition 22, the one about gig economy workers, received 58.4% approval statewide. In Fresno County, 65.7% voted “yes.” Locals also rejected affirmative action in government decisions, Proposition 16, at a rate 10% higher than elsewhere.
By rejecting measures designed to raise taxes, reinstate affirmative action and end cash bail bonds (Proposition 25), Californians on the whole may not be as progressive as some like to think. And in Fresno County, even less so. But that doesn’t mean we’re conservative, either.
Conservative compared to the Bay Area and Los Angeles? Absolutely.
But compared to where we were 20 or 30 years ago? Not even close.
So next time you flip on the radio and hear someone describe Fresno as a red pool in a blue sea, remember it’s based more on history and wishful thinking than cold, hard votes.
This is a blue county, like it or not.
This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
