Why is California Sterotyped by the rest of the country to be liberal?

Question

It seems like everyone outside California thinks the whole state is full of Liberals and Democrats and its not true. As a matter of fact there is a lot more counties in California who are republican and conservative. Look at this map which is detailed by counties of who voted republican in 2004 ,you can see the only blue counties are in the Coast, Bay Area, and Los Angeles while the rest of the state votes republican so thats why I don't see why everyone thinks California is full of Liberals?
http://www.echozoe.com/?cat=20

Kerry won California 54% to Bush who got 45% of California votes.... I would think if the rest of the U.S. is going to consider California liberal, then the number gap would be larger (ex. 90% to 10% or something big).....But I just don't think there is enough facts to label California to be a liberal state. People in the Valley, Orange, San Diego and Way up Northern California are conservative and i don't think the rest of the country realizes that.

I guess to the rest of the U.S. thinks that California is only San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Answer 1

Actually if one stands in Orange, Kings, Stanislaus, or San Diego counties they would think Califoria is very conservative. If not for the most populous counties around LA and the Bay Area California would be redder than the average Bolshevic rather than the true blue it is depicted as today.

Answer 2

Most of the counties of California have far too little amount of population and voters to make a dent in the heavily populated and heavily Democratic Los Angeles county and in the counties in the bay area. The reason we say that Cali. is left of center and that it is so Democrat is because of the fact that the state has voted Democrat for President in each of the last 4 presidential elections; the fact that both U.S. Senators are liberal Democrats (Feinstein is liberal, too, just a tid bit less than Boxer); the fact that out of the 53 seats in the House, 34 of them are now held by Democrats, compared to only 19 Republican seats; the fact that the legislature has had Democrat majorities in nearly every single election since God-knows-when; ........

Need I go on?

Actually, Tom S, even the Silicon Valley region votes Democrat, ... by big margins.

Answer 3

As a native of The People's Republic of California I'd have to agree with you that most of the counties here vote conservatively however our entire state has been ruined by the people in San Diego, Los Angeles and the Bay Area who tend to overwhelmingly vote for liberal causes and candidates. Sadly the state has been in a slow spiral down the toilet for years and it's only going to get worse before it gets better.

There's nothing wrong with this place that a 9.0 quake won't help fix.

Answer 4

Californian politics are established in two places: Los Angeles County and San Francisco. Los Angeles alone accounts for nearly 45% of all votes cast in California and when combined with those in San Francisco you get nearly 65% of all votes in the State. It matters not that the majority of the counties vote Republican when 65% of your population votes lock-steppe with the Democrat Party. But California is not unlike Massachusetts or other New England States in that regard. What make it different is that California, has long been a haven for those who practice what are considered alternative lifestyles and I don’t just mean “gays.” It isn’t just politics, its lifestyle that accounts for that “stereotype.”

Answer 5

San Francisco

Answer 6

Look at the people in the Senate an House from California. They are all extremely liberal. If Californians continue to choose liberals to represent them, they'll always have that rep. BTW when was the last time California went to a Republican Presidential candidate?

Answer 7

Well that's really an easy question when you live outside the area. California has that rep mainly because of the super libs in the Bay area. When you talk about extreme left that's where you find them. Unfortunately they have made enough noise to incorporate the idea that the entire state has to approve.

Answer 8

Well, if you look at the map, most of the red counties are in the central and eastern parts of the state, which are sparsely populated farmland, mountains and desert (San Diego and Orange counties are two exceptions). The blue areas are where most of the people live.

Answer 9

Mainly because (1) the wealthy Hollywood are there. This bunch tends to be extreme Liberal and America hating, except for the big money part (2) the San Francisco gay crowd tends to be Liberal (3) the homeless and welfare hand-out crowd tends to be Liberal (4) the artsy crowd tends to be liberal (5) the illegal immigrant supporters crown tends to be Liberal
and finally the (6) technology - silicon valley crowd tends to be corporate, big business, and Republican.

Answer 10

Tom S is making stuff up - he has probably never been to California, and certainly has never been to Silicon Valley.

A better question is why anyone would think a state as large as California, both size-wise and population-wise would be any LESS diverse then it is now?

Are other states so lockstep in their ways of thinking regardless of region? If so how, did that happen?

Seriously?