six for one, free for all

[calimac]

So now that it appears that the Six Californias state-splitting initiative is headed for the ballot in two years, I thought it would be worth examining the question of how this change would have affected the results of the last few presidential elections.  So I've been doing some number-crunching.  I'll spare you the details, but these are the results.

First we have to determine which candidate each of the six states would have voted for.  With a list of the counties constituting each, that information may be derived from the county voting results on the state Secretary of State's website.  California as a whole has voted for the Democratic candidate in each of the last four elections.  The constituent states come out as follows:
North California: all Democratic
Silicon Valley: all Democratic
West California: all Democratic
Central California: all Republican
South California: split, two Bush and two Obama (this surprised me, but there really has been a dramatic shift in three of the four large counties)
Jefferson: Republican except 2008, when it chose Obama

Now, the electoral vote.  This requires estimating the House seat apportionment, which I did by assuming that California has enough House seats to form a roughly accurate pool.  I used the method of largest remainders, which is crude but gives a rough start.  For each of the 3 relevant censuses, I assigned one seat to each of the 6 states and then assigned seats one by one to the state with the smallest proportionate representation (that is, the largest population per seat already assigned) until I ran out of California's House seats.

The results converted to electoral votes, for the 1990, 2000, and 2010 censuses in order, were:
North California: 7, 7, 7
Silicon Valley: 12, 12, 11
West California: 19, 18, 18
Central California: 7, 8, 8
South California: 15, 16, 17
Jefferson: 4, 4, 4

For the four elections, then, the electoral results are:
2000: D 38, R 26
2004: D 37, R 28
2008: D 57, R 8
2012: D 53, R 12

Applied to the nationwide results, we get
2000 real R 271, D 266; notional R 297, D 250
2004 real R 286, D 251; notional R 314, D 233
2008 real D 365, R 173; notional D 367, R 181
2012 real D 332, R 206; notional D 330, R 218

It wouldn't have changed any of the outcomes, because Obama won both times too handily (I should check and see what it would have done in 1976), but the transfer of votes to the Republicans would have meant that Ohio by itself could no longer have turned the 2004 election, but Florida would have been, just barely, still pivotal in 2000.

Comments

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Thanks, really interesting. Aside from this, Six Californias is a terrible idea and I am voting against it.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I already discussed why I'm against it.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The smartest thing about it, to my mind, is that it pointedly splits Los Angeles Country off from most of the rest of southern California. I'd never go for a measure creating a state of South California; Los Angeles County has far too much weight within the current state, and against San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Kern it would be the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. Of course, the couple of other counties that get stuck in the same new state might be dead set against the idea, but that's a lot fewer No votes.

But it will amaze me if this one doesn't lose by a huge margin.