California’s Orange County, a longtime Republican stronghold, has now flipped to become majority-Democrat.
The Orange County Register reported on Wednesday that the number of Democrats in the county has surpassed that of Republicans for the first time since 1978.
According to the Register, there are now 547,458 registered Democrats versus 547,369 registered Republicans.
Katerina Ioannides, the chair of the Orange County Young Democrats, told the Los Angeles Times that President Donald Trump had turned off many people in the area.
“Trump’s toxic rhetoric and exclusionary policies alienate women, millennials, suburban voters, immigrants and people of color — critical components of the electorate in Orange County,” she said.
The state’s GOP chairman, Shawn Steel, said the shift was the result of “a tremendous outflow of people leaving California.”
“We’ve been an out-migration state for 20 years, and that’s particularly acute in the suburbs,” Steel told the LA Times. “There is an opportunity as Democrats get more aggressive in Sacramento and alienate more people.”
The first sign of danger to California Republicans may have been the 2018 midterms, during which all four GOP-held House districts all or partially in Orange County flipped to Democrats.
Orange County isn’t the only Republican bastion that’s seeing a lot of turbulence: The county’s party shift comes amid an exodus of Texas Republicans who’ve been announcing plans to leave Congress.
