It's less than a week before Election Day, and a new Field Poll says Hillary Clinton has a 20-point lead over Donald Trump in California.
No surprise there, as the state has traditionally gone Democratic, but it’s where some of the support for the Democrat is coming from that could be a political game changer.
“Orange County used to be the county of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan – a very Republican county,” California Field Poll Director Mark DeCamillo said.
But for the first time since 1936, the Field Poll shows Orange County is on the verge of turning blue. The poll, released Wednesday, shows Hillary Clinton up 3 points – 45 percent to Donald Trump’s 42 percent – in the South Coast region, comprised of Orange and San Diego counties.
“[Orange County has] never voted for a Democratic candidate before, but this may be the year,” DeCamillo said.
One reason cited is the growing minority populations, particularly Latinos and Asian-Americans. The former is one of the fastest growing groups of eligible voters and could be up to 27 million strong at the polls next week.
NBC Bay Area political analyst Larry Gerston, Ph.D., says the shift toward Democrats has been happening over the last 25 years and at the local level too.
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“This is quite the combination: the Democrats doing well, minorities being there in Orange County. And yes, even Orange County will have fallen,” Gerston said.
Experts say the changing demographics are changing the political tendencies of other states, and it’s likely in the next eight years that North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and “yes, even Texas,” Gerston said, will tint blue.
