I live in Southern CA - born & raised in Riverside County the largest county in So Cal and is mostly conservative...California has a big conservative population BUT Los Angeles and San Fran totally negate this. Oh well the weather ROCKS. ;)
I remember back after Reagan got elected I was thumbing thru an Almanac and was looking at the results for Calif. As I remember (and it was long ago) I came up with “Orange County Cal had won the Calif election for Reagan.” My reasoning being that OC voters by a wide margin canceled out LA votes. Riverside and San Bernardino just put the icing on the cake for a Calif win. OK it was a long time ago — but that’s my memory of it. But Orange Co is not as conservative as it once was.