How to win California: A guide to the nation’s largest presidential primary
https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2020/01/how-to-win-california-guide-to-nations.html
By Ben Christopher,
CalMatters |
Aspiring Democratic presidential candidates, welcome to
California. You’re not in Iowa anymore.
Although a calendar packed with county fairs, barbecues and house
parties might be enough to carry you through the early states that will vote
and caucus in February, California — boasting the largest reserve of
candidate-electing party delegates — is a different game.
Our electorate is diverse. Our election procedures, complex. Our
population, enormous; our costs of campaigning, even more so. And now that
California’s primary has been boosted to March 3, just after the first contests
in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the qualities that make California politics unique might actually matter this time.
So consider this your primer. We spoke to five experts — two
Democratic political consultants, a political data guru, a veteran campaign
operator-turned-academic and a California elections researcher — to learn more
about the dos and don’ts of California presidential campaigning.
Tip #1: Every vote matters — but early votes may matter more
On Feb. 3, hundreds of thousands of Iowans will head to their
first-in-the-nation caucuses — and multiples more will start getting their
ballots in the mail in California, where any registered voter can cast an
absentee ballot for any reason. Campaigns have three reasons to get those
vote-by-mail supporters to cast their ballots as early as possible.
First, early voters are campaign money-savers. Every California
supporter who casts a vote in February is one fewer voter to target with
expensive ads, phone calls and door knockers in March.
Second, early votes are locked in. Every passing day in February
holds the possibility of a new attack ad, a new gaffe, a fresh primary defeat
or something else that might give a fair-weather voter second thoughts.
But there’s a third, distinctly Californian reason to get voters
to turn out early, said Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc: Early votes are
usually the first ballots to be counted — other votes can take days and days.
Veteran California election watchers are accustomed to waiting
weeks for county election officials to publish their final vote counts. A lot
can (and frequently does) change as the tally continues. Margins dwindle or
cleave open, presumed winners go down in last-minute defeat.
But ballots mailed or turned in before Election Day make up the bulk
of the initial count that officials announce on election night. That doesn’t
matter for the final outcome — every valid ballot is counted eventually. But it
does matter for the story that candidates can tell voters in other states, said
Mitchell.
“The media narrative is going to be driven by who wins in that
first 24 hours of the election,” he said. “If one of the presidential
candidates is more heavily tilted toward the late portion of the electorate,
they could see the impact of that vote weakened because it’s simply not
reported in time to affect Florida and New York and the other coming
primaries.”
Tip #2: California is less than half as white as Iowa
If California Latinos turn out at the same rate they did in 2016,
they will make up more than 1-in-5 voters this primary, according to an analysis by Mindy Romero, director of the
California Civic Engagement Project at the University of Southern California.
“A candidate that wants to win a lot of the delegates in
California can’t do it unless they pay significant attention to the Latino
vote,” she said.
And that means pitching Latino Californias and other irregular
voters on voting itself. Latino and Asian American citizens are much less
likely to be registered to vote than non-Latino white Californias. The fact
that the state now allows any eligible voter to register on Election Day could
make it easier to turn out underrepresented segments of the potential
electorate. That could work to the advantage of, say, Bernie Sanders, whose
base is disproportionately made up of young and Latino Californians.
Of course in a state as diverse as California, appealing to
demographic slices can be tricky.
“There are media markets within markets,” said Romero. “Take Los
Angeles. There’s the whole world of non-English radio and other forms of media.
As a campaign, you have to identify them, know that they’re there, know which
outlets are most influential and impactful, and then make connections. Just
buying an ad, especially if you don’t understand the political leadership in
that community, isn’t going to work.”
And advertising to non-native English speakers can be a pricey
proposition, said Rose Kapolczynski, a Democratic strategist.
“When you buy Spanish language radio,” she said, “you’re reaching
voters, non-voters, non-citizens, and a lot of people who are under 18, because
the Latino community trends young.”
That means the cost per voter reached is high.
A cheaper alternative: Take advantage of the fact that California
data vendors collect more data about individual voters here (whether they’re
registered, how they vote, where they live, what they do and buy and browse
online) than virtually any other state. That allows for much more precise
online advertising.
“You can target voters not only by the language they set their
browser to, but with this rich data, match information,” Kapolczynski said. For
example, campaigns can find out which language a voter has requested for their
ballot and bombard them with ads accordingly.
Tip #3: Think local
In most electoral contests, the math is simple: The candidate with
the most votes wins. But in California’s Democratic presidential primary, votes
are translated into delegates — party members who will convene at the national party
convention in July to formally elect a nominee.
And the conversion from popular vote to electoral outcome is a little more complicated.
That’s partly because more than half of the state’s delegates are
awarded based not on the statewide vote, but on each candidate’s performance in
the state’s 53 congressional districts.
So even smaller campaigns with little hope of competing everywhere
in the state can still make a California congressional district into their own
private Iowa.
“If you’re (Andrew) Yang and you want to ensure that you’re on
that CNN big board on election night,” said Mitchell, “the easiest thing to do
is go spend three days in (a single district in the Bay Area) and cobble
together support from the Asian community, from across Silicon Valley and from
other highly educated voters there.”
Even better if you can find a district outside the large metro
areas and make a splash inland.
“In Los Angeles, you never know when there’s going to be a car
chase or a wildfire or the mayor is doing a press conference, and that’s going
to bump you off the news,” said Kapolczynski. Not so in Fresno. “It’s a red
part of the state but there are still delegates there.”
Yet targeting a district with pinpoint precision isn’t always easy
— or cheap. Many suburban and exurban districts still exist within the
broadcast media market of their closest big city. Democratic strategist Garry
South pointed to the western Riverside County district represented by GOP Rep.
Ken Calvert.
“It’s crazy to buy (ads on) a very expensive radio station in the
LA media market to try to beam signals in Congressional District 42,” he said.
“You might think you can just cherry-pick a district here or a district there,
but it just doesn’t work that way.”
Tip #4: Remember the crossovers
Registered voters who don’t belong to a political party in
California are allowed to vote in the Democratic primary — but only if they ask for the right ballot.
For candidates whose appeal extends outside the partisan tent, the
existence of “crossover voters” creates both the opportunity to grab more
voters and the challenge of having to educate millions of people about the
minutiae of California election procedure.
Targeting young voters and Californians of color (particularly
Latinos) has been an integral part of the Sanders campaign’s strategy across the state.
These are also voting blocs that are disproportionately likely not to belong to
any party.
“Sanders didn’t win in California last time potentially because
his campaign wasn’t as adept at some of the nuances of the election system,”
said Mitchell. “In a way, by being able to take a second bite at the apple, now
the Sanders campaign is so much better armed to deal with these issues than
they were in 2016.”
But California independents span the ideological spectrum. They
include, said Kapolczynski, voters turned off by President Trump but without
loyalties to either party — “moderates who don’t want a revolution or big
structural change,” as promised by Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
“I think independents are a natural target for (Joe) Biden,
(Michael) Bloomberg, (Amy) Klobuchar and (Pete) Buttigieg,” she said.
“Older, more conservative Central Valley voters might like Biden
or Buttigieg,” added Mitchell. “Higher-income white women in suburban areas
might want to vote for Warren…Every campaign has someplace to gain.”
Tip #5: If all else fails, plan on having a boatload of money…or
hope all goes well in Iowa
The sheer size of California means the hand-shaking, baby-kissing
retail politics that defines the campaign trail from Des Moines to Manchester
doesn’t get you very far out here.
“We have more registered voters than there are people living in 47
of the 49 other states — and they’re dispersed across a state almost a thousand
miles long,” said South. “You couldn’t go to enough house parties in 20 years
to make an impact here.”
Instead, candidates rely more on (really expensive) advertising.
“On TV alone, which doesn’t include digital or mail or field
campaigns, it can cost more than $3 million per week for one ad statewide,”
said Kapolczynski. That’s prohibitively expensive for some campaigns.
“Are you going to spend a major portion of your resources in
California and risk losing in the early states?” she said. “For some
candidates, like Amy Klobuchar, she just doesn’t have the money to do both. and
is hoping for a better than expected finish in those early states.”
A better-than-expected finish in the early states can go a long
way in California, said Bob Shrum, a former political operative now at the
University of Southern California.
“It all depends on what happens in Iowa or New Hampshire. If any
candidate wins in both — especially Biden — California might be in the position
its always been in since 1972: It becomes a ratifying state rather than a
deciding state,” he said.
But a jumble of results in the first four states with no clear
frontrunner would give California voters a bit more sway. Bloomberg, who isn’t
even competing in the early states is counting on exactly that.
“He either needs a mess in the early states,” Shrum said, “or he
needs Sanders to emerge early on and he can become the moderate alternative.”
As for the candidates not named Bloomberg or Tom Steyer, the two
billionaires in the race, said Kapolczynski: “The best way to win California is
to win the first four states.”
CalMatters.org is a nonprofit,
nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
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