Marcia L. Godwin is Professor of Public Administration at the University of La Verne, CA, USA, and coeditor (with Sean D. Foreman) of  The Roads to Congress 2016. Read a chapter, “California 49th Congressional District: A Near Upset in the Golden State,” free until November 16.

Predicting competitive elections is a lot like managing in baseball: a combination of analytics and human judgment. In the just concluded baseball World Series, the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers was second guessed for overmanaging and relying too much on analytics. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Angels, actually located in Orange County to the south, hired a new manager to get the Angels back to competitive form while superstar Mike Trout is still under contract. Managerial candidates completed a lengthy analytics exam, but the new hire had actually shadowed the role for a year and had long-standing rapport with the front office.

The assessment of which Southern California congressional districts should be in play in 2018 follows a similar narrative. The metrics show that California has continued to trend Democratic; deeply Democratic areas have become even more so and formerly Republican areas have become competitive. As Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute of California wrote in an October 2018 essay, the Democratic candidate for president won Orange County in 2016 – for the first time in 80 years. 

Orange County is the home of Disneyland and historically was a mix of agricultural, business, and aerospace interests. It was long known as the heart of Ronald Reagan’s political base. Even before Reagan’s election as president, it was known for Richard Nixon’s western White House residence in coastal San Clemente. Orange County has become much more urban, high-tech, and diverse in recent decades. Once economic anchors like Irvine and Anaheim flipped to favoring Democrats, only a few wealthy, residential enclaves remained solidly Republican.

Yet, is 2018 really the election when several of California’s remaining Republican districts (14 of 53) will be handed over to the Democrats? There have been major declines in voter turnout in California in midterm elections, which has resulted in an older and more conservative electorate. Voter registration in Orange County seems to favor Republicans, who held a 36.5% to 33.9% advantage over Democrats at the time of the June 2018 primary election. With the number of no-party-preference voters continuing to rise and the percentage of Republicans likely to continue falling, why shouldn’t Democrats wait until 2020 for an easier fight? Are the 2016 results misleading because of Californians’ deep antipathy to Donald Trump?

The decision by national Democrats to move ahead in 2018 was made easier by their ability to look at individual cases from the 2016 election. Laura Brantley and I examined Congress Member Darrell Issa’s 2016 reelection campaign in The Roads to Congress 2016 and have found that the outcomes had a major impact in shaping candidate emergence and strategies for 2018. Issa, a wealthy Republican, was first elected in 2000 in a district that was based in San Diego County and extends into Orange County. He barely won reelection against a first-time candidate in the closest congressional race in 2016. Several critical lessons were drawn from that campaign:

A longtime incumbent can not rely upon name recognition in the midst of a district trending to the opposite party. Issa and Orange County Representative Ed Royce, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, both chose to retire from Congress.

Veteran members of Congress who haven’t faced challenges may stumble on the campaign trail. One pundit summed up Issa’s campaign as “mystifyingly bad.” Democrats saw opportunities to redefine Republican incumbents, although the Republican National Committee has hit back with attack ads.

Anti-Trump sentiment can spill over to Members of Congress. Issa received Trump’s endorsement. While Issa tried to distance himself from his reputation as an Obama critic and project a bipartisan image late in the campaign, voters were not persuaded.

Independent voters are Democratic voters in the age of Trump. Issa’s district had more registered Republicans than Democrats in 2016. No party preference voters narrowed his reelection margin. Therefore, political parties and donors took their cues from Clinton’s victories in Republican congressional districts rather than voter registration numbers.

New candidates might have real opportunities. Issa ran against a moderate, first-time candidate. That candidate was well-funded, but the results suggested that a wide range of candidates might be competitive if a district is ready to flip. There have been a mix of seasoned politicians, liberal newcomers, and a record number of female candidates in the 2018 elections. The districts viewed most in play also had more candidates, sometimes with unexpected candidates advancing to the general election.

So, is it really twilight for Reagan Country? With a week to go before the election, Issa’s district (the 49th) appears posed to flip to the Democrats. Mike Levin, the former leader of the Orange County Democratic Party, holds a lead over Republican Diane Harkey and it appears that Republicans may be directing last-minute funds elsewhere. Ads against incumbent Dana Rohrabacher, who has been dubbed Russia’s favorite Congressman, have portrayed him as being out of touch; his race against a wealthy Democrat is on the short list of the most competitive in the country. Then, there are the two Katies running against Republican incumbents. Katie Porter is running against Mimi Walters in an Orange/San Diego district while Katie Hill is running in a suburban Los Angeles County district. There has been a flurry of television ads in both races. Royce endorsed a former aide and state legislator, Young Kim. She is running against a lottery winner and philanthropist who recently moved into the district, but has been hit with Democratic ads calling her “Trump’s apprentice.”

The key will be voter turnout. Polls for individual congressional races rely on relatively small sample sizes and turnout models may be inaccurate. The primary turnout rebounded from the historically low levels of the 2014 midterms. I’ve gone on record with local media as predicting average to above average turnout, but haven’t gone as far as predicting that every competitive district will flip. It may be twilight for Reagan Country, but we will have to see if it is really sunset.