California's electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections 1852-2024

Since 1852, the U.S. presidential election has been contested in California 44 times, with Californians successfully voting for the winning candidate on 35 occasions, giving an overall success rate of 80 percent. California has awarded the majority of its electoral votes to the Republican Party in 23 elections, the Democratic Party in 20 elections, and the only year when a third-party candidate won a majority was in 1912, where Theodore Roosevelt won the state while campaigning as the Progressive Party's nominee. Between 1952 and 1988, there was only one election that was not won by the Republican candidate, while all elections since 1992 have been won by the Democratic nominee. In the 2024 election, Oakland-born Vice President Kamala Harris ran as the Democratic nominee, and comfortably won her home state but lost the nationwide vote.

Californian under-representation?

California was admitted to the union in 1850, and was granted just four electoral votes in its first three presidential elections. In the past two centuries, California's population has grown rapidly, largely due to a positive net migration rate from within the U.S. and abroad. Today, it has the highest population of any state in the U.S, with almost forty million people, and has therefore been designated 54 electoral votes; the most of any state. Although California has been allocated around ten percent of the total electoral votes on offer nationwide, The Golden State is home to roughly twelve percent of the total U.S. population, therefore a number closer to 62 electoral votes would be more proportional to the U.S. population distribution. Despite this, California's total allocation was reduced to 54 in the 2024 election.

Native Californians

As of 2020, Richard Nixon is the only native Californian to have been elected to the presidency, having won the election in 1968 and 1972. California also voted for Nixon in the 1960 election, although John F. Kennedy was the overall winner. Two other U.S. Presidents had declared California as their home state; they were Herbert Hoover, who won the 1928 election, and Ronald Reagan, who won in 1980 and 1984 respectively. While states generally support candidates who were born or reside there, Californian candidates have failed to carry their home state or state of birth in four U.S. presidential elections, these were; John C. Frémont in 1854 (who actually came third in California), Herbert Hoover in 1932, and Adlai Stevenson in both the 1952 and 1956 elections.