The other possibility, which I consider more likely, is that we who would try to analyze the CA results are simply overthinking it. The fact is, there are great numbers of people who simply and invariably vote Democrat...for ten different reasons neither you nor I nor a dozen professional pundits can accurately quantify. It makes no sense to us. It is unprincipled, it has a repetitively proven history of failure in the case of CA (and many other places) but these people apparently believe they are “voting their paycheck”. IT IS THEIR RIGHT to vote their paycheck. You and I would probably think that they are wrong (both morally and intellectually-thought-process-wise) to vote Dem even if their motivation is their paycheck. But where this process breaks down is largely unknowable. CA is also gerrymandered to death, something like 52 out of 53 districts are massively over-Democratted.
Myself, I can’t overthink it. I’m putting my affairs in order and getting ready to move out of the state.
“CA is also gerrymandered to death, something like 52 out of 53 districts are massively over-Democratted.”
If they could “over-Democrat” 52 of 53 districts, this just indicates it’s an overwhelmingly Democratic state.
On average, the 19 Republicans who won, won by smaller margins than the 34 Democrats who won. If the Republicans were hurt by gerrymandering, the opposite would have to be true.