In the 2018 midterm election, something happened that would have been unthinkable just a couple of decades before: Orange County, California elected Democrats to every single one of the six congressional districts partly or wholly within its borders.
Orange County, which includes many of the outlying suburbs of Los Angeles, was a notorious Republican stronghold. It is where former President Richard Nixon grew up, and the center of President Ronald Reagan's political power. It was one of the biggest bastions of the far-right John Birch Society. Prior to 2016, the county voted for Republicans in every presidential election since the Roosevelt administration. Even after California turned into a reliably blue state in the 1990s, Republicans continued to thrive down the ballot there.
The question after 2018 was, was it just a fluke due to backlash against Trump? Or was it the start of something more permanent.
A new piece of evidence may provide the answer. According to the Los Angeles Times, Democrats have now officially overtaken Republicans in party registration in Orange County.
Party registration is not necessarily a rock-solid indicator of political success — for instance, Democrats still lead in party registration in many Southern states like Kentucky and Louisiana, that used to be blue when the party had a conservative segregationist wing, even though these states now vote solidly Republican. But a dramatic shift in party registration can be indicative of where a state or county is headed politically.
The transformation of Orange County is a case study in Republicans' collapse in suburban areas, where moderate college-educated professionals have been jumping ship for years and who have picked up the pace under Trump.
