Month: November 2014

The Election Was Hard on California Democrats, Too

It’s pretty obvious that Democrats had a bad night nationally in last Tuesday’s election. They lost most of the close gubernatorial contests, lost control of a number of state legislative chambers, lost seats in the House of Representatives, and lost control of the U.S. Senate.

On the surface, it would appear that California stood against this tide. At the time of this writing, the Democrats have lost a few seats in the legislature and the congressional delegation, but they once again swept the statewide offices, from governor to secretary of state. Unlike the rest of the country, where the conversation is about which party controls the legislature, in California the conversation is about whether the Democrats will have a supermajority.

But scratch just beneath the surface, and it turns out California is not so different after all. A clean statewide sweep is not the best measure of performance, since those races can hinge more on candidate personalities or other idiosyncrasies than the lower-profile contests down-ballot do.

A better test is to compare Democratic performance in assembly and congressional races to races in the same districts two years ago. (State senate races can’t be compared this way because these districts were drawn differently this year.) The graph below shows the relationship between the Democratic vote share in this year’s assembly and congressional elections and the same two years ago, for races contested by both parties in both years (which means none of the same-party contests made possible by the new “top two” primary are included). The diagonal line marks no change: points above the line are districts where the Democrats did better, and points below are districts where they did worse. In the overwhelming majority of races, the Democratic candidate did worse this year. Moreover, this was true whether the Democrat won a large share of the vote in 2012 (farther to the right on the graph) or a small share (farther to the left).

Democrats in California’s congressional races also performed about as well as Democrats in other states. The second graph below compares California House races to others. The cloud of grey circles represents House races in other states, and as we can see, the California races fall well within it. This shows that Democrats in California did about as badly this year as Democratic candidates everywhere else.

It was a tough cycle for Democrats for a lot of reasons—their president is unpopular, the economy’s growth has not reached a broad swath of the electorate, and the president’s party is usually punished at least a little bit in midterm elections. But the story that California Democrats somehow avoided the fate of the rest of their party, at least for down-ballot races, doesn’t receive much support from the data.

Three Lessons About California’s Election Reforms

California got its second taste of two important reforms yesterday: legislative and congressional districts drawn by an independent redistricting commission, and a “top-two” primary system that allowed voters to choose any candidate in the primary, regardless of party, and advanced the top two vote-getters, also regardless of party, to the fall election. Both went into effect in 2012.

How did the reforms do this time around? This is really a question about the legislative and congressional races, since the statewide races weren’t affected by the redistricting and there were no same-party races at that level. The new districts were used for the first time only in the state senate races.

A first pass at the results (as they stand at the time of this writing) suggests three important conclusions:

  1. Competition was higher. Races were more competitive this year than before the reforms, though they were a little less competitive than in 2012. Among races between candidates of opposing parties, 15% had a margin of victory of less than 10 points, compared to 18% in 2012 and just 7% in the decade before. There were 25 same-party races (compared with 28 in 2012), almost exclusively in districts that would have been uncompetitive under the old primary system. (The only possible exception was Congressional District 25 just north of Los Angeles, where two Republicans faced off against each other in a district that might have been competitive for a Democrat under the right circumstances). Roughly one-quarter of those same-party races were decided by less than 10 points, down slightly from 2012.

  2. The establishment did pretty well. Despite the extra competition, most races turned out as they might have before the reforms. In other words, incumbents and candidates endorsed by their party fared well. All but seven of the 114 incumbents across state assembly, state senate, and U.S. House races won reelection, although fewer incumbents ran in the senate’s new districts (50%) compared to the assembly (70%) or Congress (89%). One incumbent in a same-party race is losing this cycle (Raul Bocanegra in Assembly District 39), compared to six who lost in 2012 (two of whom were running against another incumbent). The average margin of victory for incumbents (33%) was about the same as in 2012 (33%) and in the decade before (31%). In the same-party races where only one candidate was endorsed by the party, that candidate won 15 out of 18 times, compared to 12 of 16 in 2012.

  3. Minor parties continued to struggle. One criticism of the top-two system is that minor-party and no-party-preference candidates find it more difficult to survive the first-round election to reach the fall runoff. This year, only seven such candidates managed it, four of them by running write-in campaigns in races where there was otherwise no formal major-party opposition. None of these candidates was elected on Tuesday (though such candidates rarely won before the reforms, either).

It will likely take more time for the impact of redistricting and election reforms to be clear, but for the time being, the results are falling into some predictable patterns. As voters, candidates, and campaign consultants wrap their heads around the idea of the top two, we may see further evolution of this system. But for now, the reforms have transformed certain aspects of California elections—such as increasing the number of competitive races and allowing same party runoffs in the fall—while leaving the broader landscape unchanged.

Drought Watch: What If 2015 Is Dry?

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

Three consecutive years of drought have depleted California’s water storage, brought hardship to the agricultural sector, and led to stringent emergency conservation measures in cities throughout the state. In October, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its outlook for next winter, and the preliminary modeling suggests more of the same. So what, if anything, should the state do differently next year?

The State Water Resources Control Board, which administers water rights in California, is asking this very question. In May of this year, the board limited surface water diversions (a process called “curtailment”) for thousands of water users for the first time since the 1976–77 drought. The board followed a century-old system that cuts back diversions based on the seniority of the water right. During curtailments, this system—often referred to as “first in time, first in right”—gives priority to those who have the longest history of water use or those who have property that lies along a river. Few, except perhaps those who were not asked to cut back, were happy with how this process went, so the board sought input on how to improve water allocation next year.

In collaboration with a number of our colleagues, we made recommendations to the board for improving the efficiency and fairness of the curtailment process. Our letter, posted in full on the UC Davis Center for Watershed Science’s Californiawaterblog.com, makes the following recommendations:

Modernize curtailments. Last year’s approach was based upon limited information about available flows and water use. Because of this, the board was forced to curtail whole groups of water users, rather than identifying individual users based on their seniority. For example, on many rivers the board curtailed everyone who had a water right that post-dated 1914, the year our modern rights system was established. In the coming year, the board can significantly improve curtailments by taking advantage of existing tools that forecast flow and estimate location and amount of use.

In addition, this year the board did not undertake significant curtailments until late May, more than two months after the irrigation season began. We recommend that the board announce curtailments much earlier in the year so that water managers can better plan to seek alternative supplies or implement additional conservation actions.

Clarify policy on the environment and public health and safety. This year, the board, with some minor exceptions, chose not to specify the amount of water that should be set aside to protect public health and safety, nor did it set priorities for trade-offs between meeting environmental needs and satisfying water rights. If, as predicted, 2015 turns out to be dry, the board will need to confront these issues head on. We argue that the laws governing water use require the board to set and implement policies on these issues. In addition, we recommend that the board create an independent scientific advisory panel that would help to inform decisions about environmental trade-offs.

These changes will be useful, even if it rains this winter. Recurring droughts are a part of California’s climate, and by modernizing how we allocate our water resources during times of scarcity we can be better prepared for the coming year—and future droughts.