California’s Kamala By the Numbers: 46, 47, 48, 49

Now that Kamala Harris is definitely going to be the Democratic nominee for president, there are a few numbers her campaign may want to focus on.

The first is 46, her percentage of the vote in the latest polls. The second is 47, Donald Trump’s current percentage in the polls and the number of the California proposition that will bedevil her run.

As to her general standings in the national polls, she is – so far – doing a bit better against Trump than the remains of Joe Biden did before his fellow Democrats unceremoniously chucked him on the cart:

She has also shifted the momentum in a few key swing states – whether or not that is due to people actually loving her and her policies or is more the result of the “new car smell” effect is not yet clear.

Harris will win California, just as Biden would have – the question is by how much.  In 2020, Biden beat Trump by a margin of two to one and Hillary Clinton did almost as well.  In 2022,  and before, statewide Democrats averaged 57.7% of the vote (except for one race in which Republican Lanhee Chen ran a perfect campaign and still only nibbled four points off that number.)   

Harris, though, is a known quantity in California which will both help and hurt her. What will specifically hurt is the presence of Proposition 36 on the ballot, the roll-back of the disastrous “reforms” of Prop 47.  The state, and the nation, will be reminded that she played a key role in its passage by writing alternate reality ballot title and summary for 47.

Harris, then state Attorney General, dubbed Prop. 47 as the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” 

She may just as well have titled it the “Everyone Gets a Cute Puppy Act” for all the relation to reality her title had to the actual contents of Prop 47.

Prop 47 may well have passed without Harris’ interference, but there is no question that she is in part responsible for the massive increase in crime and drug use in the state. And Prop. 36’s much needed and very popular reforms could give voters pause: Why am I voting for Harris for president when I’m voting for a proposition to undo the damage she did to California?

Another drag on Harris may be the way she became the nominee. There are definitely grumbling Democrats, angry that their Biden votes were tossed aside and that the party had cleared the way for him in the first place all the while knowing his mental state was getting worse and worse. As its beneficiary, Harris will be seen as having taken part in that sordid process. 

Note – as to the complaint that the Democrats ignored the “democracy” they say Trump will destroy, it was – holding nose – legal. In the end, the party can pick whomever it wants, however it wants. To paraphrase mid-20^th century songstress Lesley Gore, “it’s their party and they’ll lie if they want to.”

Either way, Harris will take the state but the question of the margin of victory could be psychologically extremely important and this is where 48 and 49 come into play.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote while losing the electoral vote to Trump, a fact she reminds everyone of on every possible occasion (but do not call her an “election denier.”) 

It is a true statement, but still an extremely misleading one. Clinton won the popular vote by about 2.9 million votes nationwide. Her margin of victory over Trump in California was 4.2 million votes.

What that means is that she technically won the popular vote, but really lost it by about 1.3 million votes in the rest of the country.

A similar scenario played out in 2020.  In Biden’s popular vote victory, 5 million of his 7 million vote margin came from, again, California. Toss is New York for another 2 million more votes for Biden, and that’s more than the total margin.  

But in the rest of the country, Trump won. Twice. 

In other words, Trump won both the 48 and the 49  state popular vote counts.  And that’s why the electoral college was created: to make sure massive states would not be able to run roughshod over smaller states when it came to picking the president.

While not technically mattering, after each election the media drilled into the public’s head that Trump lost the popular vote, therefore he wasn’t really president, etc.

That’s why the California margin is important.

There have yet to be released California polls on the Trump/Harris contest, but in previous Trump/Biden polls, Biden was getting only about 55% of the vote, about 8 points less than he got in 2020.  

Harris will most likely do better than 55%, but any margin slimmer than Biden’s jeopardizes he chance to claim popular vote winner, no matter how the electoral count ends up. And, if Trump wins but Harris gets more votes, the same tired claims of a whiff of illegitimacy will be rolled out for yet another four years.

And that won’t be good for anyone.