WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.680 Welcome back to another deep dive. We are really 00:00:02.680 --> 00:00:04.320 glad you could join us today. Yeah. Thanks for 00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:05.620 tuning in. I'm really looking forward to this 00:00:05.620 --> 00:00:07.759 one. Because we are looking at a particularly 00:00:07.759 --> 00:00:12.220 dense but absolutely fascinating piece of historical 00:00:12.220 --> 00:00:15.060 data today. Our source material for this deep 00:00:15.060 --> 00:00:18.960 dive is a comprehensive Wikipedia data set and 00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:22.100 it tracks every single United States Senate election 00:00:22.100 --> 00:00:24.719 in California since the state adopted popular 00:00:24.719 --> 00:00:27.120 voting. Right. It is essentially this massive 00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:30.410 spreadsheet. Yeah. logging over a century of 00:00:30.410 --> 00:00:33.590 dates, names, party affiliations and shifting 00:00:33.590 --> 00:00:36.450 vote tallies, it functions almost like a ledger 00:00:36.450 --> 00:00:38.750 of political evolution. It really does. When 00:00:38.750 --> 00:00:40.829 you track a single state's electoral behavior 00:00:40.829 --> 00:00:44.310 over a timeline that long, you stop seeing just 00:00:44.310 --> 00:00:46.969 individual campaigns. Right. The personalities 00:00:46.969 --> 00:00:48.950 fade away a bit. Exactly. And you start seeing 00:00:48.950 --> 00:00:51.750 the underlying structural shifts in how an electorate 00:00:51.750 --> 00:00:54.670 actually operates. Spotting the hidden patterns 00:00:54.670 --> 00:00:57.369 of how an electorate evolves over a century is 00:00:57.369 --> 00:00:59.320 really the whole point of looking at a dataset 00:00:59.320 --> 00:01:01.399 like this. It's not just about memorizing names. 00:01:01.759 --> 00:01:05.700 No, definitely not. And before we get into those 00:01:05.700 --> 00:01:08.980 shifts, we do need to issue a mandatory impartiality 00:01:08.980 --> 00:01:11.810 disclaimer. Always important. Right. As you might 00:01:11.810 --> 00:01:14.790 expect, a century's worth of election data involves 00:01:14.790 --> 00:01:17.069 some politically charged content. Oh, absolutely. 00:01:17.409 --> 00:01:20.290 It features both left wing and right wing historical 00:01:20.290 --> 00:01:23.069 figures. So we want to make it unequivocally 00:01:23.069 --> 00:01:25.370 clear to you, our listener, that neither of us 00:01:25.370 --> 00:01:27.989 is endorsing any viewpoints, political parties 00:01:27.989 --> 00:01:30.409 or candidates that are mentioned in this data 00:01:30.409 --> 00:01:32.829 set. Right. We aren't taking sides here. Our 00:01:32.829 --> 00:01:36.349 sole goal today is to impartially report on the 00:01:36.349 --> 00:01:39.650 factual data. We just want to explore. the historical 00:01:39.650 --> 00:01:42.829 and structural ideas contained within this original 00:01:42.829 --> 00:01:45.370 source material. That is an important boundary 00:01:45.370 --> 00:01:47.510 to set. I mean, we are looking at the math, the 00:01:47.510 --> 00:01:50.670 rule changes and the historical context. We are 00:01:50.670 --> 00:01:52.670 definitely not litigating the politics themselves. 00:01:53.150 --> 00:01:55.549 OK, let's unpack this. If we look at the structure 00:01:55.549 --> 00:01:57.650 of California's class one and class three Senate 00:01:57.650 --> 00:02:00.549 seats, the staggered terms the founders set up 00:02:00.549 --> 00:02:03.069 start to show some wild patterns in the data 00:02:03.069 --> 00:02:05.370 right from the jump. Yeah, they really do. Because 00:02:05.370 --> 00:02:07.829 the Constitution mandates that only one third 00:02:07.829 --> 00:02:09.930 of the Senate is up for reelection every two 00:02:09.930 --> 00:02:12.629 years. Right, to maintain institutional continuity. 00:02:13.069 --> 00:02:17.210 Exactly. You rarely see a state's entire representation 00:02:17.210 --> 00:02:20.530 overhaul at once. But the way those staggered 00:02:20.530 --> 00:02:22.330 seats have actually been filled, well, it's gone 00:02:22.330 --> 00:02:24.650 through some massive mechanical changes. And 00:02:24.650 --> 00:02:27.569 the first major mechanical change jumps out immediately 00:02:27.569 --> 00:02:30.210 in the timeline. When California was admitted 00:02:30.210 --> 00:02:33.150 to the union back in 1850, following its initial 00:02:33.150 --> 00:02:36.389 1849 elections, the state legislature actually 00:02:36.389 --> 00:02:39.389 picked the senators. Which feels so alien today. 00:02:39.710 --> 00:02:42.669 It does. But the data set takes a sharp turn 00:02:42.669 --> 00:02:44.460 with the ratification of the Senate. Amendment 00:02:44.460 --> 00:02:48.159 in 1913. That amendment moved the power of selection 00:02:48.159 --> 00:02:50.960 away from the legislature and directly into the 00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:53.240 hands of the voters. And looking at the columns 00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:56.240 for those first few popular elections, the immediate 00:02:56.240 --> 00:02:58.319 aftermath of that amendment looks, I mean, it 00:02:58.319 --> 00:03:00.460 looks highly volatile. Highly volatile is a good 00:03:00.460 --> 00:03:02.319 way to put it. I'm looking at the row for the 00:03:02.319 --> 00:03:04.120 first class three popular election. This is in 00:03:04.120 --> 00:03:07.680 1914. A Democrat named James D. Phelan won the 00:03:07.680 --> 00:03:11.439 seat, but his vote share was only 31 .59 percent. 00:03:11.639 --> 00:03:14.439 Yeah. To secure a federal Senate seat with less 00:03:14.439 --> 00:03:17.219 than a third of the popular vote implies a completely 00:03:17.219 --> 00:03:20.000 fractured electorate. What's fascinating here 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:22.280 is how the data captures a moment of intense 00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:25.759 political experimentation. The progressive movement 00:03:25.759 --> 00:03:28.039 of the early 20th century was at its absolute 00:03:28.039 --> 00:03:31.560 peak, and the two -party system wasn't as rigidly 00:03:31.560 --> 00:03:33.800 calcified as it is today. Yeah, the voters had 00:03:33.800 --> 00:03:37.740 options. Exactly. Phelan didn't win with 31 % 00:03:37.740 --> 00:03:39.699 because the rest of the state just stayed home. 00:03:39.819 --> 00:03:42.139 He won because the electorate was aggressively 00:03:42.139 --> 00:03:45.280 splitting its ticket across a really wide ideological 00:03:45.280 --> 00:03:48.219 spectrum. You can see that split clearly in the... 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:50.500 runner -up columns. Phelan was running against 00:03:50.500 --> 00:03:52.979 a progressive candidate, Francis J. Heaney. He 00:03:52.979 --> 00:03:56.259 took 28 .81%. Just trailing us. Right behind 00:03:56.259 --> 00:03:58.419 him. And then you have a Republican, Joseph R. 00:03:58.439 --> 00:04:01.840 Noland, right behind that with 28 .69%. There's 00:04:01.840 --> 00:04:03.900 even a socialist candidate, Ernest Unterman, 00:04:04.020 --> 00:04:06.740 pulling in over 6%. It's a four -way ideological 00:04:06.740 --> 00:04:09.120 pull. It really seems like once the voters got 00:04:09.120 --> 00:04:11.759 their hands on the wheel in 1914, they immediately 00:04:11.759 --> 00:04:14.060 pulled in four different directions. Which is 00:04:14.060 --> 00:04:16.600 a natural byproduct of a totally new system. 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:19.540 The electorate was testing the boundaries of 00:04:19.540 --> 00:04:22.620 its newly acquired direct influence. Yeah, feeling 00:04:22.620 --> 00:04:24.839 things out. But what the data shows next is that 00:04:24.839 --> 00:04:27.680 this chaos didn't last long, though it did evolve 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:30.220 into something arguably stranger. Much stranger. 00:04:30.459 --> 00:04:34.000 If 1914 was fractured, the data for the class 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:36.899 one seat starting in 1916 shows a completely 00:04:36.899 --> 00:04:39.220 different phenomenon. And it centers around one 00:04:39.220 --> 00:04:41.800 politician. Hiram Johnson. Yeah. He wins that 00:04:41.800 --> 00:04:45.660 first class one popular. election with 61 .09%. 00:04:45.660 --> 00:04:48.060 But as you track his career down the spreadsheet, 00:04:48.339 --> 00:04:50.399 his vote share just keeps climbing. It really 00:04:50.399 --> 00:04:53.759 takes off. He gets 62 % in 1922, then 74 % in 00:04:53.759 --> 00:04:57.420 1928. And then I hit the row for 1934. The number 00:04:57.420 --> 00:05:00.519 is 94 .66%. Which is an anomaly that completely 00:05:00.519 --> 00:05:02.720 forces you to double check the source material. 00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:05.579 I definitely did. I mean, capturing almost 95 00:05:05.579 --> 00:05:07.920 % of the vote in a state as large and diverse 00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:10.279 as California seems mathematically improbable 00:05:10.279 --> 00:05:12.620 for any contested race. I had to dig into the 00:05:12.620 --> 00:05:14.560 footnotes of the data set to figure out how almost 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:17.420 2 million out of the roughly 2 million votes 00:05:17.420 --> 00:05:20.000 cast went to one guy. And what did it say? It 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.980 notes that Johnson was cross -nominated. During 00:05:22.980 --> 00:05:26.379 that 1934 election, he didn't just run as a Republican. 00:05:26.839 --> 00:05:29.560 The Democratic Party and the California Progressive 00:05:29.560 --> 00:05:32.399 Party also nominated him as their official candidate. 00:05:32.889 --> 00:05:35.569 That is just wild. To put that in a modern context, 00:05:35.689 --> 00:05:38.589 it would be like two rival spots teams in the 00:05:38.589 --> 00:05:41.069 championship game agreeing to draft the exact 00:05:41.069 --> 00:05:43.709 same star player. And have him play for both 00:05:43.709 --> 00:05:45.930 of them simultaneously. Exactly. It fundamentally 00:05:45.930 --> 00:05:48.790 bypasses the adversarial nature of an election. 00:05:48.990 --> 00:05:51.430 Right. The idea of the modern Republican and 00:05:51.430 --> 00:05:53.449 Democratic parties agreeing to share a Senate 00:05:53.449 --> 00:05:55.870 nominee is practically science fiction today. 00:05:56.240 --> 00:05:58.839 Totally. But it tells us that the electoral rulebook 00:05:58.839 --> 00:06:01.379 back then allowed for a completely different 00:06:01.379 --> 00:06:03.680 kind of political strategy. If we connect this 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:06.060 to the bigger picture, the cross -nomination 00:06:06.060 --> 00:06:09.000 rules of that era reveal an electorate that valued 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:12.000 broad, synthesized coalitions over strict partisan 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:14.459 loyalty. They weren't locked into the D or R 00:06:14.459 --> 00:06:17.329 labels. Right. Candidates could build a mega 00:06:17.329 --> 00:06:19.810 coalition by appealing directly to the party 00:06:19.810 --> 00:06:22.970 apparatuses of multiple factions. It was a legal 00:06:22.970 --> 00:06:25.050 mechanism that essentially allowed politicians 00:06:25.050 --> 00:06:27.709 to end the general election before it even started. 00:06:27.829 --> 00:06:29.949 By monopolizing the primary nominations across 00:06:29.949 --> 00:06:32.050 the board. Exactly. And it wasn't just the major 00:06:32.050 --> 00:06:34.850 parties maneuvering like this. The third party 00:06:34.850 --> 00:06:38.050 data from this early period is incredibly robust. 00:06:38.189 --> 00:06:41.870 It is. In the 1922 class one race. The famous 00:06:41.870 --> 00:06:44.550 author Upton Sinclair ran on the socialist ticket 00:06:44.550 --> 00:06:47.949 and secured 6 .28 percent. Which is a solid showing. 00:06:48.170 --> 00:06:50.449 But the standout number for me is in the 1932 00:06:50.449 --> 00:06:53.089 class three race. A candidate named Robert P. 00:06:53.110 --> 00:06:55.610 Shuler running for the Prohibition Party captured 00:06:55.610 --> 00:06:59.089 25 .77 percent of the vote. Over a quarter of 00:06:59.089 --> 00:07:01.250 the electorate voting for a single issue third 00:07:01.250 --> 00:07:03.470 party candidate in a federal Senate race. That 00:07:03.470 --> 00:07:05.810 is huge. Exactly. Over half a million votes. 00:07:06.600 --> 00:07:08.980 Today, third party candidates often struggle 00:07:08.980 --> 00:07:11.100 to break low single digits in statewide federal 00:07:11.100 --> 00:07:14.160 races. But the data set from the 1920s and 30s 00:07:14.160 --> 00:07:17.040 shows them as highly viable landing pads for 00:07:17.040 --> 00:07:19.740 a significant chunk of the electorate. It reinforces 00:07:19.740 --> 00:07:22.060 the idea that the political landscape was fluid. 00:07:22.560 --> 00:07:24.740 Voters didn't feel locked into a binary choice, 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:27.379 and the structural rules of the time didn't punish 00:07:27.379 --> 00:07:29.560 them as heavily for looking outside the traditional 00:07:29.560 --> 00:07:32.220 establishment. No, it rewarded building those 00:07:32.220 --> 00:07:34.759 unique coalitions. But as the data set moves 00:07:34.759 --> 00:07:37.819 into the post -war era, the rules and the behavior 00:07:37.819 --> 00:07:40.160 of the electorate shift again. We hit the mid 00:07:40.160 --> 00:07:42.819 -century mark, and the data for the 1946 Class 00:07:42.819 --> 00:07:45.819 I special election presents another massive structural 00:07:45.819 --> 00:07:49.480 oddity. Republican William Noland. wins the seat 00:07:49.480 --> 00:07:54.620 with 425 ,273 votes. That translates to 74 .31 00:07:54.620 --> 00:07:58.779 % of the total, right? Yes, 74 .31%. But the 00:07:58.779 --> 00:08:01.060 source indicates he won this via a write -in 00:08:01.060 --> 00:08:03.500 campaign. That is staggering. And his runner 00:08:03.500 --> 00:08:06.180 -up, Will Rogers Jr., also secured nearly 16 00:08:06.180 --> 00:08:08.959 % as a write -in. Mobilizing hundreds of thousands 00:08:08.959 --> 00:08:11.279 of voters to physically write a name on a ballot 00:08:11.279 --> 00:08:13.920 requires a level of logistical coordination that 00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:16.259 is difficult to fathom. Especially without modern 00:08:16.259 --> 00:08:19.060 digital communication. No social media, no email. 00:08:19.339 --> 00:08:23.420 It's just pure grassroots organization. It shows 00:08:23.420 --> 00:08:25.910 an electorate that was not only highly engaged, 00:08:26.149 --> 00:08:29.629 but also capable of bypassing the printed ballot 00:08:29.629 --> 00:08:32.710 options entirely to assert its preference. That 00:08:32.710 --> 00:08:35.029 level of engagement makes perfect sense when 00:08:35.029 --> 00:08:37.389 you look at how aggressively contested the state 00:08:37.389 --> 00:08:40.330 was during this period. Moving through the 1950s, 00:08:40.330 --> 00:08:43.169 60s and 70s, the data set reads like a persistent 00:08:43.169 --> 00:08:45.769 ping pong match between the two major parties. 00:08:46.190 --> 00:08:48.669 It's a constant back and forth. In the class 00:08:48.669 --> 00:08:51.350 three seat alone, we see Richard Nixon win for 00:08:51.350 --> 00:08:54.190 the Republicans in 1950. Right. Then a Republican 00:08:54.190 --> 00:08:57.289 George Murphy takes it in 1964. The Democrats 00:08:57.289 --> 00:09:00.070 swing it back with John V. Tunney in 1970. Then 00:09:00.070 --> 00:09:02.309 Republican S .I. Hayakawa swings it right back 00:09:02.309 --> 00:09:05.429 in 1976. That volatility is a defining characteristic 00:09:05.429 --> 00:09:08.720 of mid -century California politics. The state 00:09:08.720 --> 00:09:10.759 was a quintessential battleground. It really 00:09:10.759 --> 00:09:13.259 was. The post -war population boom brought in 00:09:13.259 --> 00:09:15.539 wildly diverse demographics and neither party 00:09:15.539 --> 00:09:17.700 had a structural lock on the state. The electorate 00:09:17.700 --> 00:09:20.179 was constantly reevaluating its leadership. Resulting 00:09:20.179 --> 00:09:22.299 in this aggressive seat swapping. Exactly. Which 00:09:22.299 --> 00:09:24.720 is a stark contrast to how the state is often 00:09:24.720 --> 00:09:27.519 viewed today. You get the sense from these columns 00:09:27.519 --> 00:09:30.200 that control of California's representation in 00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:33.019 Washington was never a foregone conclusion during 00:09:33.019 --> 00:09:35.690 those decades. It wasn't. Candidates had to fight 00:09:35.690 --> 00:09:37.929 inch by inch for the center of the electorate. 00:09:37.970 --> 00:09:39.990 The data clearly shows the center was willing 00:09:39.990 --> 00:09:42.389 to change its mind every six years. But that 00:09:42.389 --> 00:09:44.850 volatility hits a brick wall as we move down 00:09:44.850 --> 00:09:46.950 the spreadsheet. It really does. Here's where 00:09:46.950 --> 00:09:49.629 it gets really interesting. We arrive at the 00:09:49.629 --> 00:09:54.149 filestone year of 1992. 1992 is the great structural 00:09:54.149 --> 00:09:56.789 anomaly of the late 20th century in this data 00:09:56.789 --> 00:10:00.049 set. Because of a midterm vacancy, the staggering 00:10:00.049 --> 00:10:02.309 of the classes we discussed earlier was temporarily 00:10:02.309 --> 00:10:05.240 overridden. Right. The usual rules didn't apply. 00:10:05.539 --> 00:10:07.559 Both the class one special election and the class 00:10:07.559 --> 00:10:09.740 three regular election ended up on the exact 00:10:09.740 --> 00:10:12.720 same ballot. Voters went to the polls in November 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:16.659 1992 and effectively selected their entire Senate 00:10:16.659 --> 00:10:20.139 delegation in a single afternoon. The statistical 00:10:20.139 --> 00:10:22.519 likelihood of both seats opening up simultaneously 00:10:22.519 --> 00:10:25.340 like that is rare. But the consequences of that 00:10:25.340 --> 00:10:27.580 specific election are what truly altered the 00:10:27.580 --> 00:10:30.100 state's historical trajectory. The results were 00:10:30.100 --> 00:10:33.580 a definitive sweep for the Democrats. Diane Feinstein 00:10:33.580 --> 00:10:36.240 won the Class 1 special election against Republican 00:10:36.240 --> 00:10:40.559 John Seymour with 54 .29%. And on that same ballot. 00:10:40.720 --> 00:10:43.539 On that very same ballot, Barbara Boxer won the 00:10:43.539 --> 00:10:46.120 Class 3 regular election against Republican Bruce 00:10:46.120 --> 00:10:50.220 Hershenson with 47 .90%. When you trace those 00:10:50.220 --> 00:10:52.059 two names down the rest of the spreadsheet, you 00:10:52.059 --> 00:10:55.370 see the complete end of the ping pong era. That 00:10:55.370 --> 00:10:58.169 single day of voting locked in the state Senate 00:10:58.169 --> 00:11:01.330 representation for a quarter of a century. Decades 00:11:01.330 --> 00:11:03.929 of stability. Boxer holds the class three seat 00:11:03.929 --> 00:11:08.149 through reelections in 1998, 2004 and 2010. Feinstein 00:11:08.149 --> 00:11:10.149 holds the class one seat through an incredible 00:11:10.149 --> 00:11:14.789 run 1994, 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2018. This is 00:11:14.789 --> 00:11:17.830 a phenomenal streak of incumbency. The data shifts 00:11:17.830 --> 00:11:20.289 from a highly volatile back and forth battleground 00:11:20.289 --> 00:11:22.809 state to a solid block of long term stability. 00:11:23.029 --> 00:11:25.009 It's a night and day difference. The voters made 00:11:25.009 --> 00:11:27.230 a dual choice in 1992, and then the data set 00:11:27.230 --> 00:11:29.970 just reiterates that choice for decades. It highlights 00:11:29.970 --> 00:11:32.649 how a single demographic or cultural shift, if 00:11:32.649 --> 00:11:34.730 captured effectively in a concurrent election 00:11:34.730 --> 00:11:37.409 year, can completely freeze a political landscape. 00:11:37.690 --> 00:11:39.559 The state's center of gravity shifted. Right, 00:11:39.639 --> 00:11:41.960 and the incumbency advantage of holding both 00:11:41.960 --> 00:11:45.440 seats simultaneously created an almost insurmountable 00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:47.659 barrier for the opposition. But just when the 00:11:47.659 --> 00:11:50.220 columns start to look entirely predictable, the 00:11:50.220 --> 00:11:52.759 source notes reveal the final, massive structural 00:11:52.759 --> 00:11:55.740 rule change of our timeline, Proposition 14. 00:11:56.330 --> 00:11:59.590 Passed by the voters in 2010. Yes. And Proposition 00:11:59.590 --> 00:12:02.210 14 completely rewrote the underlying mechanics 00:12:02.210 --> 00:12:04.889 of how general elections operate. By instituting 00:12:04.889 --> 00:12:07.990 a top -two primary system. According to the footnotes, 00:12:07.990 --> 00:12:10.610 this means all candidates, regardless of party, 00:12:10.750 --> 00:12:14.179 run on a single primary ballot. The top two vote 00:12:14.179 --> 00:12:16.379 getters advance to November. It doesn't matter 00:12:16.379 --> 00:12:18.779 if they are from the same party. Exactly. And 00:12:18.779 --> 00:12:22.360 crucially, it explicitly outlaws the very write 00:12:22.360 --> 00:12:25.200 in campaigns that guys like William Nolan used 00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:29.000 to win back in 1946. General elections are strictly 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:31.539 limited to the top two names. This raises an 00:12:31.539 --> 00:12:33.440 important question regarding campaign strategy. 00:12:33.720 --> 00:12:36.659 How so? Well. When you implement a top two system 00:12:36.659 --> 00:12:39.220 in a state that heavily favors one party, the 00:12:39.220 --> 00:12:41.659 general election ceases to be a traditional partisan 00:12:41.659 --> 00:12:43.940 battle. Oh, because the minority party gets boxed 00:12:43.940 --> 00:12:46.320 out. Exactly. You create an environment where 00:12:46.320 --> 00:12:48.840 multiple candidates from the majority party risk 00:12:48.840 --> 00:12:52.139 splitting their own base in the primary. Or conversely, 00:12:52.159 --> 00:12:55.240 they succeed and lock the minority party out 00:12:55.240 --> 00:12:57.659 of the general election entirely. And we see 00:12:57.659 --> 00:13:00.179 that lockout effect immediately in the data set. 00:13:00.509 --> 00:13:03.649 In the 2016 Class 3 election, the general ballot 00:13:03.649 --> 00:13:06.730 didn't feature a Republican and a Democrat. Democrat 00:13:06.730 --> 00:13:09.029 Kamala Harris faced off against another Democrat, 00:13:09.230 --> 00:13:12.690 Loretta Sanchez. With Harris winning 61 .60%. 00:13:12.690 --> 00:13:16.129 Right. Two years later, in the 2018 Class 1 election, 00:13:16.509 --> 00:13:19.350 Democrat Dianne Feinstein ran against fellow 00:13:19.350 --> 00:13:22.070 Democrat Kevin DeLeon. That intra -party dynamic 00:13:22.070 --> 00:13:24.809 changes the entire calculus for the voter. It 00:13:24.809 --> 00:13:27.649 has to. For decades, the data set shows an electorate 00:13:27.649 --> 00:13:30.269 relying on the basic shorthand of partisan labels. 00:13:30.529 --> 00:13:32.470 You look for the D or the R. And you make your 00:13:32.470 --> 00:13:34.110 choice. But when you are forced to choose between 00:13:34.110 --> 00:13:36.549 two candidates from the exact same party platform, 00:13:36.909 --> 00:13:39.470 those labels are completely useless. Voters are 00:13:39.470 --> 00:13:42.029 forced to parse regional alliances, highly specific 00:13:42.029 --> 00:13:44.769 policy nuances, and individual candidate histories. 00:13:45.070 --> 00:13:47.929 It shifts the bitterest electoral fights from 00:13:47.929 --> 00:13:50.049 the general election to the primary. And then 00:13:50.049 --> 00:13:52.129 it forces the minority party voters to act as 00:13:52.129 --> 00:13:54.649 a tiebreaker between two candidates they may 00:13:54.649 --> 00:13:56.990 not. inherently support. It's a complete gamification 00:13:56.990 --> 00:13:59.830 of the primary process. And looking at the most 00:13:59.830 --> 00:14:02.450 recent data entries for Alex Padilla in 2022 00:14:02.450 --> 00:14:06.429 and Adam Schiff in 2024, the numbers reflect 00:14:06.429 --> 00:14:09.389 this modern consolidated era. It's a whole new 00:14:09.389 --> 00:14:11.549 paradigm. Interestingly, both of those recent 00:14:11.549 --> 00:14:14.669 cycles also featured concurrent special and regular 00:14:14.669 --> 00:14:17.490 elections on the same ballot, echoing that 1992 00:14:17.490 --> 00:14:19.809 anomaly we talked about. The mechanics of the 00:14:19.809 --> 00:14:22.450 ballot might mirror 1992, but the raw numbers 00:14:22.450 --> 00:14:24.610 involved in those modern races. are operating 00:14:24.610 --> 00:14:27.309 on an entirely different scale. That is the data 00:14:27.309 --> 00:14:29.230 point that really puts this whole timeline into 00:14:29.230 --> 00:14:31.970 perspective for me. In 2024, Adam Schiff received 00:14:31.970 --> 00:14:36.590 9 ,036 ,252 votes to win the full -term Class 00:14:36.590 --> 00:14:39.289 1 seat. Over 9 million votes for a single candidate. 00:14:39.470 --> 00:14:41.509 The sheer administrative and communicative undertaking 00:14:41.509 --> 00:14:44.149 of a modern statewide race is staggering when 00:14:44.149 --> 00:14:46.110 you view it against the historical baseline. 00:14:46.370 --> 00:14:49.340 It really is. So what does this all mean? We've 00:14:49.340 --> 00:14:52.000 traced a data set from the era of state legislature 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:54.919 appointments to the direct democracy of the 17th 00:14:54.919 --> 00:14:57.379 Amendment. We watched Hiram Johnson manipulate 00:14:57.379 --> 00:15:00.580 cross -nomination rules to hit 94 percent of 00:15:00.580 --> 00:15:03.360 the vote. We saw third parties like the Prohibitionists 00:15:03.360 --> 00:15:05.679 command a quarter of the electorate. We track 00:15:05.679 --> 00:15:08.059 the volatile, right and heavy ping -pong era 00:15:08.059 --> 00:15:10.559 of the mid -century, the abrupt stabilization 00:15:10.559 --> 00:15:14.320 in 1992, and finally, the strategic intra -party 00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:17.120 showdowns engineered by the top two primary system 00:15:17.120 --> 00:15:20.139 of Proposition 14. It is quite the journey. For 00:15:20.139 --> 00:15:22.159 you listening, the overarching lesson of this 00:15:22.159 --> 00:15:24.960 data set is that electoral outcomes are rarely 00:15:24.960 --> 00:15:27.600 just about the candidates' personalities. They 00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:29.220 are fundamentally dictated by the structural 00:15:29.220 --> 00:15:31.740 rules of the era. That is the essential takeaway. 00:15:31.980 --> 00:15:34.220 The electorate behaves according to the boundaries 00:15:34.220 --> 00:15:36.899 it is. given. Beautifully said. But as a final 00:15:36.899 --> 00:15:38.639 thought to ponder, I want you to consider the 00:15:38.639 --> 00:15:40.639 physical reality of the numbers we just discussed. 00:15:40.919 --> 00:15:44.460 In 1914, James D. Phelan secured his United States 00:15:44.460 --> 00:15:48.639 Senate seat with roughly 279 ,000 votes. In 2024, 00:15:49.370 --> 00:15:52.250 Adam Schiff required over 9 million votes to 00:15:52.250 --> 00:15:55.289 perform the exact same constitutional duty, representing 00:15:55.289 --> 00:15:58.070 the exact same geographic borders in the exact 00:15:58.070 --> 00:16:01.129 same chamber of Congress. The scale is just massive. 00:16:01.330 --> 00:16:03.549 That means the required base of popular support 00:16:03.549 --> 00:16:06.570 has multiplied by more than 30 times over a century. 00:16:07.129 --> 00:16:09.750 I encourage you to explore on your own what that 00:16:09.750 --> 00:16:12.269 massive scale means for the future of representation. 00:16:13.009 --> 00:16:15.690 How does a politician authentically communicate 00:16:15.690 --> 00:16:18.549 with an electorate of nearly 40 million people? 00:16:18.789 --> 00:16:21.870 When the scale of democracy expands that drastically, 00:16:22.169 --> 00:16:25.110 the very nature of human representation has to 00:16:25.110 --> 00:16:27.710 adapt to survive. It completely reframes how 00:16:27.710 --> 00:16:29.649 you look at the concept of a popular mandate. 00:16:29.870 --> 00:16:31.850 The numbers in this spreadsheet do more than 00:16:31.850 --> 00:16:33.929 just list the winners. They map the changing 00:16:33.929 --> 00:16:36.639 physics of our electoral system. Thank you for 00:16:36.639 --> 00:16:39.019 joining us on this deep dive. We hope you walk 00:16:39.019 --> 00:16:41.120 away with a new lens for viewing political data. 00:16:41.360 --> 00:16:43.779 Keep looking for the structural rules, keep analyzing 00:16:43.779 --> 00:16:45.480 the numbers, and we'll see you next time.