2000 United States presidential election in California

Main article: 2000 United States presidential election
2000 United States presidential election in California
← 1996 November 7, 2000 2004 →
Turnout70.94% (of registered voters) Increase 5.41 pp
51.92% (of eligible voters) Decrease 0.64 pp[1]
 
Nominee Al Gore George W. Bush
Party Democratic Republican
Home state Tennessee Texas
Running mate Joe Lieberman Dick Cheney
Electoral vote 54 0
Popular vote 5,861,203 4,567,429
Percentage 53.45% 41.65%
County results
President before election

Bill Clinton
Democratic

Elected President

George W. Bush
Republican

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The 2000 United States presidential election in California took place on November 7, 2000, as part of the wider 2000 United States presidential election. Voters chose 54 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

California was won by the Democratic ticket of Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee and Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut by 11.8% points over the Republican ticket of Texas Governor George W. Bush and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney of Wyoming.

The state hosted the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles and was slightly contested by both candidates due to a large Hispanic population and a large independent and moderate base surrounding San Diego and Sacramento's suburbs. This was the first time since 1880 in which a winning Republican presidential candidate lost California, and the first time ever that a losing Democrat won a majority of the vote in the state. As of the 2020 presidential election, Bush is the last Republican candidate to carry Alpine and Mono counties in a presidential election. This was also the first time since 1976 that California did not back the candidate who won the overall presidential election as well.

Bush became the first ever Republican to win the White House without carrying Imperial County, as well as the first to do so without carrying Santa Barbara County since Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the first to do so without carrying Monterey County since William McKinley in 1896, the first to do so without carrying San Benito County since William McKinley in 1900, and the first to do so without carrying Napa or Sacramento Counties since Richard Nixon in 1968. He also became the first nominee of either party to win the White House without receiving at least a million votes from Los Angeles County since this county first gave any nominee a million votes, in 1952. This feat would be reprised by Donald Trump in 2016.

California was one of ten states that backed George H. W. Bush for president in 1988 that didn't back George W. Bush in either 2000 or 2004.

Primaries

Results

2000 United States presidential election in California[2][3]
Party Candidate Votes Percentage Electoral votes
Democratic Albert A. Gore Jr. and Joseph Lieberman 5,861,203 53.45% 54
Republican George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney 4,567,429 41.65% 0
Green Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke 418,707 3.82% 0
Libertarian Harry Browne 45,520 0.42% 0
Reform Pat Buchanan 44,987 0.41% 0
American Independent Howard Phillips 17,042 0.16% 0
Natural Law John Hagelin 10,934 0.10% 0
write-in David McReynolds 28 0.00% 0
Other write-in 6 0.00% 0
Invalid or blank votes 177,010 1.59% —
Totals 10,965,856 100.00% 54
Voter turnout 70.94% —

By county

County Al Gore
Democratic 		George W. Bush
Republican 		Ralph Nader
Green 		Various candidates
Other parties 		Margin Total votes cast
# % # % # % # % # %
Alameda 342,889 69.36% 119,279 24.13% 27,499 5.56% 4,669 0.95% 223,610 45.23% 494,336
Alpine 265 45.22% 281 47.95% 25 4.27% 15 2.56% -16 -2.73% 586
Amador 5,906 38.19% 8,766 56.69% 584 3.78% 208 1.34% -2,860 -18.50% 15,464
Butte 31,338 37.43% 45,584 54.45% 5,727 6.84% 1,072 1.28% -14,246 -17.02% 83,721
Calaveras 7,093 37.58% 10,599 56.15% 863 4.57% 321 1.69% -3,506 -18.57% 18,876
Colusa 1,745 31.22% 3,629 64.92% 151 2.70% 65 1.16% -1,884 -33.70% 5,590
Contra Costa 224,338 58.81% 141,373 37.06% 13,067 3.43% 2,700 0.71% 82,965 21.75% 381,478
Del Norte 3,117 37.58% 4,526 54.57% 485 5.85% 166 2.00% -1,409 -16.99% 8,294
El Dorado 26,220 36.35% 42,045 58.29% 3,013 4.18% 858 1.19% -15,825 -21.94% 72,136
Fresno 95,059 43.05% 117,342 53.14% 6,541 2.96% 1,893 0.86% -22,283 -10.09% 220,835
Glenn 2,498 28.68% 5,795 66.53% 268 3.08% 150 1.72% -3,297 -37.85% 8,711
Humboldt 24,851 44.40% 23,219 41.48% 7,100 12.68% 802 1.44% 1,632 2.92% 55,972
Imperial 15,489 53.53% 12,524 43.28% 608 2.10% 316 1.09% 2,965 10.25% 28,937
Inyo 2,652 33.93% 4,713 60.31% 344 4.40% 106 1.35% -2,061 -26.38% 7,815
Kern 66,003 36.20% 110,663 60.70% 3,474 1.91% 2,168 1.18% -44,660 -24.50% 182,308
Kings 11,041 38.97% 16,377 57.80% 567 2.00% 350 1.24% -5,336 -18.83% 28,335
Lake 10,717 51.23% 8,699 41.58% 1,265 6.05% 238 1.14% 2,018 9.65% 20,919
Lassen 2,982 28.17% 7,080 66.88% 339 3.20% 185 1.75% -4,098 -38.71% 10,586
Los Angeles 1,710,505 63.47% 871,930 32.35% 83,731 3.11% 28,988 1.08% 838,575 31.12% 2,695,154
Madera 11,650 34.89% 20,283 60.74% 1,080 3.23% 382 1.14% -8,633 -25.85% 33,395
Marin 79,135 64.26% 34,872 28.32% 8,289 6.73% 859 0.70% 44,263 35.94% 123,155
Mariposa 2,816 34.88% 4,727 58.55% 379 4.69% 152 1.88% -1,911 -23.67% 8,074
Mendocino 16,634 48.34% 12,272 35.66% 5,051 14.68% 453 1.32% 4,362 12.68% 34,410
Merced 22,726 45.08% 26,102 51.77% 1,166 2.31% 424 0.84% -3,376 -6.69% 50,418
Modoc 945 23.07% 2,969 72.47% 122 2.98% 61 1.49% -2,024 -49.28% 4,107
Mono 1,788 40.91% 2,296 52.53% 230 5.26% 57 1.30% -508 -11.62% 4,371
Monterey 67,618 57.53% 43,761 37.23% 5,059 4.30% 1,096 0.93% 23,857 20.30% 117,534
Napa 28,097 54.32% 20,633 39.89% 2,471 4.78% 523 1.01% 7,464 14.43% 51,724
Nevada 17,670 37.22% 25,998 54.76% 3,287 6.92% 524 1.10% -8,328 -17.54% 47,479
Orange 391,819 40.36% 541,299 55.75% 26,833 2.76% 10,954 1.13% -149,480 -15.39% 970,905
Placer 42,449 36.04% 69,835 59.28% 4,449 3.78% 1,061 0.90% -27,386 -23.24% 117,799
Plumas 3,458 33.25% 6,343 60.98% 456 4.38% 144 1.38% -2,885 -27.73% 10,401
Riverside 202,576 44.90% 231,955 51.42% 11,678 2.59% 4,918 1.09% -29,379 -6.52% 451,127
Sacramento 212,792 49.31% 195,619 45.33% 17,659 4.09% 5,480 1.27% 17,173 3.98% 431,550
San Benito 9,131 54.25% 7,015 41.68% 535 3.18% 150 0.89% 2,116 12.57% 16,831
San Bernardino 214,749 47.21% 221,757 48.75% 11,775 2.59% 6,612 1.45% -7,008 -1.54% 454,893
San Diego 437,666 45.66% 475,736 49.63% 33,979 3.54% 11,253 1.17% -38,070 -3.97% 958,634
San Francisco 241,578 75.54% 51,496 16.10% 24,828 7.76% 1,884 0.59% 190,082 59.44% 319,786
San Joaquin 79,776 47.70% 81,773 48.90% 4,195 2.51% 1,485 0.89% -1,997 -1.20% 167,239
San Luis Obispo 44,526 40.89% 56,859 52.22% 6,523 5.99% 978 0.90% -12,333 -11.33% 108,886
San Mateo 166,757 64.29% 80,296 30.95% 10,433 4.02% 1,913 0.73% 86,461 33.34% 259,399
Santa Barbara 73,411 47.37% 71,493 46.13% 8,664 5.59% 1,406 0.91% 1,918 1.24% 154,974
Santa Clara 332,490 60.66% 188,750 34.44% 19,072 3.48% 7,817 1.43% 143,740 26.22% 548,129
Santa Cruz 66,618 61.48% 29,627 27.34% 10,844 10.01% 1,261 1.16% 36,991 34.14% 108,350
Shasta 20,127 30.25% 43,278 65.04% 2,131 3.20% 1,008 1.51% -23,151 -34.79% 66,544
Sierra 540 29.24% 1,172 63.45% 86 4.66% 49 2.65% -632 -34.21% 1,847
Siskiyou 6,323 31.90% 12,198 61.55% 872 4.40% 426 2.15% -5,875 -29.65% 19,819
Solano 75,116 57.02% 51,604 39.17% 3,869 2.94% 1,146 0.87% 23,512 17.85% 131,735
Sonoma 117,295 59.54% 63,529 32.25% 14,324 7.27% 1,858 0.94% 53,766 27.29% 197,006
Stanislaus 56,448 44.01% 67,188 52.38% 3,398 2.65% 1,233 0.96% -10,740 -8.37% 128,267
Sutter 8,416 31.68% 17,350 65.31% 594 2.24% 204 0.77% -8,934 -33.63% 26,564
Tehama 6,507 31.20% 13,270 63.63% 697 3.34% 380 1.82% -6,763 -32.43% 20,854
Trinity 1,932 33.33% 3,340 57.62% 396 6.83% 129 2.23% -1,408 -24.29% 5,797
Tulare 33,006 36.75% 54,070 60.20% 1,834 2.04% 908 1.01% -21,064 -23.45% 89,818
Tuolumne 9,359 39.44% 13,172 55.51% 949 4.00% 247 1.04% -3,813 -16.07% 23,727
Ventura 133,258 47.14% 136,173 48.17% 10,235 3.62% 3,026 1.07% -2,915 -1.03% 282,692
Yolo 33,747 54.93% 23,057 37.53% 4,107 6.69% 525 0.85% 10,690 17.40% 61,436
Yuba 5,546 34.39% 9,838 61.00% 507 3.14% 236 1.46% -4,292 -26.61% 16,127
Total 5,861,203 53.45% 4,567,429 41.65% 418,707 3.82% 118,517 1.09% 1,293,774 11.80% 10,965,856

Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican

By congressional district

Gore won 33 of 52 congressional districts, including four held by Republicans while Bush won two held by Democrats.

District Bush Gore Representative
1st 41% 50% Mike Thompson
2nd 59% 34% Wally Herger
3rd 51% 44% Doug Ose
4th 58% 37% John Doolittle
5th 37% 57% Bob Matsui
6th 30% 62% Lynn Woolsey
7th 27% 69% George Miller
8th 15% 77% Nancy Pelosi
9th 12% 79% Barbara Lee
10th 45% 51% Ellen Tauscher
11th 50% 47% Richard Pombo
12th 27% 67% Tom Lantos
13th 30% 66% Pete Stark
14th 32% 62% Anna Eshoo
15th 38% 57% Tom Campbell
Mike Honda
16th 32% 64% Zoe Lofgren
17th 33% 60% Sam Farr
18th 53% 44% Gary Condit
19th 58% 38% George Radanovich
20th 48% 50% Cal Dooley
21st 64% 33% Bill Thomas
22nd 49% 45% Lois Capps
23rd 47% 48% Elton Gallegly
24th 38% 58% Brad Sherman
25th 51% 45% Buck McKeon
26th 25% 70% Howard Berman
27th 41% 53% Jim Rogan
Adam Schiff
28th 47% 49% David Dreier
29th 22% 72% Henry Waxman
30th 19% 75% Xavier Becerra
31st 27% 69% Matthew G. Martínez
Hilda Solis
32nd 13% 83% Diane Watson
33rd 15% 83% Lucille Roybal-Allard
34th 30% 67% Grace Napolitano
35th 12% 86% Maxine Waters
36th 44% 51% Steven T. Kuykendall
Jane Harman
37th 15% 83% Juanita Millender-McDonald
38th 37% 58% Steve Horn
39th 53% 43% Ed Royce
40th 56% 39% Jerry Lewis
41st 50% 47% Gary Miller
42nd 39% 57% Joe Baca
43rd 52% 44% Ken Calvert
44th 49% 47% Mary Bono
45th 56% 40% Dana Rohrabacher
46th 42% 54% Loretta Sánchez
47th 58% 39% Christopher Cox
48th 60% 36% Ron Packard
Darrell Issa
49th 42% 53% Brian Bilbray
Susan Davis
50th 37% 59% Bob Filner
51st 55% 41% Duke Cunningham
52nd 54% 41% Duncan Hunter

Analysis

President Bill Clinton in a rally in Los Angeles on November 2, 2000

Vice President Al Gore easily defeated Texas Governor George W. Bush in California. Bush campaigned several times in California, but it didn't seem to help as Gore defeated Bush by 11.8%. Bush did make substantial headway in the Gold Country, Shasta Cascade, and parts of the Central Valley, flipping San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced Counties (all of which had voted for Bill Clinton twice) and winning the highest vote share of any presidential nominee in decades (exceeding California natives Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan) in Shasta, Madera, Tehama, Siskiyou, Lassen, Plumas, Modoc, and Sierra Counties. He also flipped San Bernardino County, his largest county flip in the state (and nationally), as well as Ventura County; but he underperformed in all the large, then-historically Republican counties of Southern California and the Central Coast (San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo) relative to Bob Dole's performance in 1996, losing Santa Barbara outright despite that Dole had lost it by only 4.5%.[4] In the then-Republican bastion of Orange County, Al Gore became the first Democrat to crack 40% since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide.

Furthermore, Gore overwhelmingly won Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the state and the country, and swept the Bay Area (where Bush's father had won Napa County in 1988, the last time a Republican had won the state). In San Francisco, although Bush did improve slightly on Dole's vote share, he posted the second-worst showing of any major-party nominee (after Dole) since John Davis in 1924. Even though Green Party nominee Ralph Nader broke into double digits in the North Coast counties of Mendocino and Humboldt, as well as in Santa Cruz County, these factors helped Gore win statewide by a little over 1.3 million votes, greater than his national popular vote margin over Bush (although less than the raw vote margin whereby he won New York).

Apart from Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative former adviser to Presidents Nixon and Reagan and two-time Republican presidential candidate, was on the ballot as the nominee of the Reform Party, which had been founded by Ross Perot in 1994. However, as in most of the rest of the country, Buchanan fell well short of Perot's 1996 performance in California, cracking 1% only in Glenn County (and in tiny Alpine County, where he received eight votes). Buchanan was essentially a non-factor, and California was projected for Gore upon poll-closing, at 11 PM EST.

Electors

Main article: List of 2000 United States presidential electors

Technically the voters of California cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. California is allocated 54 electors because it has 52 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 54 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all 54 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.

The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 18, 2000,[5] to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.

The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All were pledged to and voted for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman:[6]

  1. Sunil Aghi
  2. Amy Arambula
  3. Rachel Binah
  4. R. Stephen Bollinger
  5. Roberts Braden
  6. Laura Karolina Capps
  7. Anni Chung
  8. Joseph A. Cislowski
  9. Sheldon Cohn
  10. Thor Emblem
  11. Elsa Favila
  12. John Freidenrich
  13. Cecelia Fuentes
  14. Glen Fuller
  15. James Garrison
  16. Sally Goehring
  17. Florence Gold
  18. Jill S. Hardy
  19. Therese Horsting
  20. Georgie Huff
  21. Robert Eugene Hurd
  22. Harriet A. Ingram
  23. Robert Jordan
  24. John Koza
  25. John Laird
  26. N. Mark Lam
  27. Manuel M. Lopez
  28. Henry Lozano
  29. David Mann
  30. Beverly Martin
  31. R. Keith McDonald
  32. Carol D. Norberg
  33. Ron Oberndorfer
  34. Gerard Orozco
  35. Trudy Owens
  36. Gregory S. Pettis
  37. Flo Rene Pickett
  38. Theodore H. Plant
  39. Art Pulaski
  40. Eloise Reyes
  41. Alex Arthur Reza
  42. C. Craig Roberts
  43. Jason Rodríguez
  44. Luis D. Rojas
  45. Howard L. Schock
  46. Lane Sherman
  47. David A. Torres
  48. Larry Trullinger
  49. Angelo K. Tsakopoulos
  50. Richard Valle
  51. Karen Waters
  52. Don Wilcox
  53. William K. Wong
  54. Rosalind Wyman

References

  1. ^ "Historical Voter Registration and Participation in Statewide General Elections 1910-2018" (PDF). California Secretary of State. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  2. ^ "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections - California". Retrieved January 7, 2013.
  3. ^ "Report of Registration as of October 10, 2000" (PDF). California Secretary of State. January 7, 2001. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 7, 2008. Retrieved August 10, 2008.
  4. ^ Leip, Dave (November 4, 2020). "2000 Presidential General Election Data - California". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.
  5. ^ "2000 Post-Election Timeline of Events".
  6. ^ "President Elect - 2000". Archived from the original on February 12, 2012. Retrieved October 24, 2009.

See also