Alameda County and the greater Bay Area is home turf for Vice President Kamala Harris. She was born in Oakland, grew up in Berkeley and started her career as a prosecutor in Alameda County before becoming the district attorney of San Francisco.
But in November, turnout for her was anemic in Alameda County and the rest of the Bay Area, while at the same time, President-elect Donald Trump picked up support, according to election results finalized by counties across the state last week.
The number of votes Trump got in the Bay Area has increased by a whopping 43% since his first election.
And while the Democrats still have an easy majority among California voters, their portion of the vote, 58.5%, was the smallest in a presidential election since 2004.
“People were just looking at their bills, paying a lot more than they did four years earlier, and that hurt the Democrats,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College. “Democrats didn’t seem to put a whole lot of resources into carrying the state, they more or less took it for granted. A lot of voters were very dissatisfied with local Democrats … and that probably depressed Democratic turnout.”
That dissatisfaction was clear in local election results. San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, lost her reelection, and in the East Bay two progressives, Oakland’s Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, were overwhelmingly recalled from office.
While Harris visited the Bay Area multiple times for fundraisers, her campaign focused its resources on swing states rather than on turning out the hometown vote.
Even with the campaign’s attempt to turn out supporters, nationwide, Harris got 6.3 million fewer votes than she and President Joe Biden got in 2020, a 7.8% drop.
People celebrate presidential election results on Grand Avenue near Lake Merritt in Oakland, Calif., on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020. Former Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris defeated President Donald Trump. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
California’s turnout for the Democrats dropped by twice that, and the Bay Area saw a slightly steeper drop, with 16.7% fewer Harris votes.
In Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties combined, 389,000 fewer votes were cast for the Democrat in 2024. And the drop in Harris’ home county was even steeper, with 19.1% fewer votes than in the last presidential election and just a quarter of a percent more than Democrat Hillary Clinton got in 2016.
The upshot: Nearly all the votes Democrats gained in 2020 were lost this year in the Bay Area.
Samer Araabi was one of those Bay Area residents who chose not to show up for Harris this year. The San Francisco resident is an active member of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, a Bay Area group protesting Israel’s war in Gaza.
“There has been huge disillusionment within my community toward the Harris campaign and toward the Democratic Party generally,” he said.
After more than a year of furiously organizing, he was unsatisfied with Harris’ “tired tropes about working tirelessly for a cease-fire while sending arms” and the party’s decision not to let Palestinian voices take the stage at the Democratic National Convention.
“I did vote, I just didn’t vote for her,” Araabi said. He voted third-party this time after voting for Biden in 2020, acknowledging his protest vote was unlikely to change the outcome given California’s lopsided Democratic advantage. “If I lived in Michigan, I probably would have felt differently, but in California, why would I bother?”
And Araabi was not alone. He said he heard about many friends and acquaintances who made the same choice. But disillusionment with the Democrats’ stance on the Palestinians likely only explains a fraction of the drop in votes. The economy was also a major factor.
“California isn’t a red state, but Californians don’t like paying too much for eggs, and that dampened democratic enthusiasm,” Pitney said. Crime and immigration also play a role, he said, along with “general dissatisfaction with Biden.” As vice president, Harris was strongly associated with the outgoing president.
That tracks with what Mary Piscitelli is seeing at the Republican Club of Rossmoor, where she serves as treasurer. “We’ve seen so much discontent with all voters,” she said. In Contra Costa County, where she lives, there were 2,400 more Trump votes this year than last election, a 1.6% increase, compared to the 16,000 vote drop for Democrats, a loss of 14.5%.
“There’s been a decent number of walk-aways” she said, referring to voters who switch their registration to Republican, walking away from the Democratic Party.
Mary Piscitelli, Rossmoor Republican Club treasurer, center celebrates with Liz Ritchie, of Knightsen, left, and Rico Ramirez, of Concord, as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is projected to win North Carolina during the Contra Costa County GOP Election Watch Party at the Back Forty Texas BBQ Roadhouse & Saloon in Pleasant Hill, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
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Piscitelli is surprised Trump’s vote didn’t increase by even more, based on the interest she has seen recently. “I just know, from an energy standpoint, there’s been a lot more conservative talk out there,” she said. When she and other local Republicans set up a booth at this year’s Lafayette Art and Wine Festival, it was “just busting with energy,” she said.
At times, Republicans in Contra Costa County have felt the need to stay “closeted,” Piscitelli said, hiding their political views in a majority Democrat county. But that feeling is changing now, she said, noting the county has seen 5,000 new Republican registrations this year, a notable increase.
Much ink was spilled in 2020 explaining the dramatic bump in voter participation, partly due to the expansion of vote-by-mail in response to pandemic restrictions. But despite Biden’s electoral college win, Trump gained more ground in the Bay Area that year than Biden did. Trump got 34% more votes in California when he lost in 2020 than he got in 2016, while turnout for the Democrats grew 27%.
Overall turnout was lower this year than the last two elections. In California, 75% of registered voters turned up in 2016, growing to 81% in 2020, but turnout dropped to 71% in 2024.
Despite that, more Trump voters have shown up each time across the Bay Area. There were 10,000 additional Trump voters in the five-county Bay Area in 2024 after an increase of 184,000 votes for him from 2016 to 2020.
What does that mean for Democrats in California moving forward? Pitney thinks it is still too early to know exactly, but what’s clear is that Trump gained ground in California, Harris lost vote share in 57 of 58 counties compared to Biden.
“It’s hard to tell whether this is the beginning of a trend, or just something that reflects the circumstances of 2024” Pitney said.
Cynthia Frybarger, left, and Jill Dyson, supporters for Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, reacts while watching the presidential election returns at the Democratic watch party in the Democratic Volunteer Center in Mountain View, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
