Geographically, California is a Republican state.
The insanely large Los Angeles Basin is what makes us, as a state, vote like communists.
It's the same as the large state of New York. Four of NYC's five boroughs tilt the state blue. Upstate, it's mostly conservative. Even out on Long Island, there are many conservative strongholds.
Many point to Staten Island as a conservative borough of NYC but only has 500,000 residents. The other four boroughs (Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn) have 8,300,000 people.
Now I've been to California many times and love the state. However, the Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas are massive and vote mostly blue. This overwhelms the rest of the colossal state.
For those who have not been to LA, it has to be experienced to be believed. You can drive 40-50 miles and see nothing but urban jungle with hundreds of Starbucks, Whole Foods, etc. In fact, I was recently in San Diego and took I-5 towards LA. Soon as I got to the northern border of Camp Pendleton, it became basically Los Angeles. When I was stationed at Pendleton in the early 80s, you had to get 30-40 miles north of Pendleton to get into the urban part of LA Metro.
Every state can say the same. It really doesn’t matter as the state legislature and governor are dominated by liberals and it infects others. The US is balkanizing and I’m not sad about that.