Save Newport Real News in Newport Beach
As if last year’s election wasn’t a wake-up call for Republicans that Democrats are no longer sleeping on the job, today, the number of registered voters in “The Great Red County” has– for the first time since the Nixon Era– flipped.
It is a common statement that the biggest partisan-donor ZIP code in the US is “92660”– and they almost all donate Republican– but donors only donate when they think people can do things with their money. If they are donating and they see their money being spent on a losing battle, expect for that cash to dry up. Likewise, expect the Blue Money to increase, as they can see that their cash *is* being spent effectively, thereby accelerating the process of a complete flip of the county from “Reagan Country” into… well… I guess we will find out.
But it’s not just Democrats who are on the rise– Republicans are dropping their “R” and re-registering as “No Party Preference” voters (“NPP” to political hacks, and “independents” to normal folk), and NPP now makes up a whopping 27% of county totals, the rest being split at 34% each, and with the remaining 5% going to other minority parties, like the Libertarian Party.
Traditional logic assumes that the NPP registrations will generally vote in the same fashion that the rest of the splits do– for instance if we extrapolate the 27% of the total who are NPP, their voting habits will likely reflect the equivalent voting habits for the party-registered voters, indicating that Republicans and Democrats can generally rely on 9.18% of the total (34% of 27%) to vote for each of them, even though they are registered NPP, and about 1.35% of the total (5% of 27%) will go to third-parties.
| 100 | TOTAL | 27 | NPP |
| 27 | NPP | ||
| 34 | Dem | 9.18 | Dem |
| 34 | Rep | 9.18 | Rep |
| 5 | Other | 1.35 | Other |
As Republicans continue to elect leaders for the OC GOP who endorse politicians like the Diane Dixon (www.dumpdixon.com) for endorsements as “model republicans”, it is easy to see why the small-government Republican base is fleeing: Nobody is holding on to the small government values they profess to exude.
At the same time, Democrats are ramping up the anti-Trump rhetoric to a degree that it is ever-present. Like an old TV that makes that near-hyper-sonic noise when it’s turned on, the presidential criticism always rings in the background.
But how will it all pan out during the upcoming election season?
That’s something that I think everyone is interested in finding out. The “no tax return, no ballot vote” law in California is being challenged right now. The effect of this (other than the obvious) would be to remove Trump from the ballot in California. While nobody actually thinks Trump might win California, the down-ballot cascading effect could deal some serious blows to Republican candidates throughout the state, as people who would normally show up to vote for Trump (and also vote for other Republicans) may not show up at all. Several lawsuits have been filed in an attempt to get this law declared unconstitutional. And with the primaries in California moved up to March 3rd, we will be the one of the first in the nation to vote for the 2020 nominee. Again: While not a single person in California believes that California will go Red this election or any foreseeable one, this was done in order to increase the prominency of our state– primarily for the Democratic nominees.
