From the LA Times, here’s a harbinger for the rest of the country:
Deep inside a new USC/Los Angeles Times poll are details that could make the California Republican Party, and by extension its cohorts elsewhere in the country, fear anew the march of time and demographics.
California right now is an extreme example of the nation, to be sure: more ethnically mixed and younger than most states, and riven for 20 years by a hobbling GOP civil war that now is surfacing dramatically elsewhere in the country. But if California is on the leading edge, as opposed to an outlier, the poll serves as confirmation that long-term problems loom for Republicans.
Take party registration: Among white California voters, almost four in 10 are Democrats and four in 10 are Republicans. But among Latinos 55% are Democrats and only 15% are Republicans. Among black voters, 76% are Democrats and 4% are Republicans. There were not enough Asian voters to accurately assess, but overall, minority voters are 54% Democratic to 14% Republican. (Just more than one-quarter of minority voters are registered independents, a group that generally votes Democratic in California.)
The collision between ethnicity and age is even more lethal. Six in 10 white voters are over 50, making them prized in the present but not dependable in future decades. The reverse is true for Latinos, 64% of whom are age 49 or younger. Overall, among all voters, 35% of those 50 and over are Republicans; of those younger, only 23% were.
