Welcome back to another deep dive. We are really
glad you could join us today. Yeah. Thanks for
tuning in. I'm really looking forward to this
one. Because we are looking at a particularly
dense but absolutely fascinating piece of historical
data today. Our source material for this deep
dive is a comprehensive Wikipedia data set and
it tracks every single United States Senate election
in California since the state adopted popular
voting. Right. It is essentially this massive
spreadsheet. Yeah. logging over a century of
dates, names, party affiliations and shifting
vote tallies, it functions almost like a ledger
of political evolution. It really does. When
you track a single state's electoral behavior
over a timeline that long, you stop seeing just
individual campaigns. Right. The personalities
fade away a bit. Exactly. And you start seeing
the underlying structural shifts in how an electorate
actually operates. Spotting the hidden patterns
of how an electorate evolves over a century is
really the whole point of looking at a dataset
like this. It's not just about memorizing names.
No, definitely not. And before we get into those
shifts, we do need to issue a mandatory impartiality
disclaimer. Always important. Right. As you might
expect, a century's worth of election data involves
some politically charged content. Oh, absolutely.
It features both left wing and right wing historical
figures. So we want to make it unequivocally
clear to you, our listener, that neither of us
is endorsing any viewpoints, political parties
or candidates that are mentioned in this data
set. Right. We aren't taking sides here. Our
sole goal today is to impartially report on the
factual data. We just want to explore. the historical
and structural ideas contained within this original
source material. That is an important boundary
to set. I mean, we are looking at the math, the
rule changes and the historical context. We are
definitely not litigating the politics themselves.
OK, let's unpack this. If we look at the structure
of California's class one and class three Senate
seats, the staggered terms the founders set up
start to show some wild patterns in the data
right from the jump. Yeah, they really do. Because
the Constitution mandates that only one third
of the Senate is up for reelection every two
years. Right, to maintain institutional continuity.
Exactly. You rarely see a state's entire representation
overhaul at once. But the way those staggered
seats have actually been filled, well, it's gone
through some massive mechanical changes. And
the first major mechanical change jumps out immediately
in the timeline. When California was admitted
to the union back in 1850, following its initial
1849 elections, the state legislature actually
picked the senators. Which feels so alien today.
It does. But the data set takes a sharp turn
with the ratification of the Senate. Amendment
in 1913. That amendment moved the power of selection
away from the legislature and directly into the
hands of the voters. And looking at the columns
for those first few popular elections, the immediate
aftermath of that amendment looks, I mean, it
looks highly volatile. Highly volatile is a good
way to put it. I'm looking at the row for the
first class three popular election. This is in
1914. A Democrat named James D. Phelan won the
seat, but his vote share was only 31 .59 percent.
Yeah. To secure a federal Senate seat with less
than a third of the popular vote implies a completely
fractured electorate. What's fascinating here
is how the data captures a moment of intense
political experimentation. The progressive movement
of the early 20th century was at its absolute
peak, and the two -party system wasn't as rigidly
calcified as it is today. Yeah, the voters had
options. Exactly. Phelan didn't win with 31 %
because the rest of the state just stayed home.
He won because the electorate was aggressively
splitting its ticket across a really wide ideological
spectrum. You can see that split clearly in the...
runner -up columns. Phelan was running against
a progressive candidate, Francis J. Heaney. He
took 28 .81%. Just trailing us. Right behind
him. And then you have a Republican, Joseph R.
Noland, right behind that with 28 .69%. There's
even a socialist candidate, Ernest Unterman,
pulling in over 6%. It's a four -way ideological
pull. It really seems like once the voters got
their hands on the wheel in 1914, they immediately
pulled in four different directions. Which is
a natural byproduct of a totally new system.
The electorate was testing the boundaries of
its newly acquired direct influence. Yeah, feeling
things out. But what the data shows next is that
this chaos didn't last long, though it did evolve
into something arguably stranger. Much stranger.
If 1914 was fractured, the data for the class
one seat starting in 1916 shows a completely
different phenomenon. And it centers around one
politician. Hiram Johnson. Yeah. He wins that
first class one popular. election with 61 .09%.
But as you track his career down the spreadsheet,
his vote share just keeps climbing. It really
takes off. He gets 62 % in 1922, then 74 % in
1928. And then I hit the row for 1934. The number
is 94 .66%. Which is an anomaly that completely
forces you to double check the source material.
I definitely did. I mean, capturing almost 95
% of the vote in a state as large and diverse
as California seems mathematically improbable
for any contested race. I had to dig into the
footnotes of the data set to figure out how almost
2 million out of the roughly 2 million votes
cast went to one guy. And what did it say? It
notes that Johnson was cross -nominated. During
that 1934 election, he didn't just run as a Republican.
The Democratic Party and the California Progressive
Party also nominated him as their official candidate.
That is just wild. To put that in a modern context,
it would be like two rival spots teams in the
championship game agreeing to draft the exact
same star player. And have him play for both
of them simultaneously. Exactly. It fundamentally
bypasses the adversarial nature of an election.
Right. The idea of the modern Republican and
Democratic parties agreeing to share a Senate
nominee is practically science fiction today.
Totally. But it tells us that the electoral rulebook
back then allowed for a completely different
kind of political strategy. If we connect this
to the bigger picture, the cross -nomination
rules of that era reveal an electorate that valued
broad, synthesized coalitions over strict partisan
loyalty. They weren't locked into the D or R
labels. Right. Candidates could build a mega
coalition by appealing directly to the party
apparatuses of multiple factions. It was a legal
mechanism that essentially allowed politicians
to end the general election before it even started.
By monopolizing the primary nominations across
the board. Exactly. And it wasn't just the major
parties maneuvering like this. The third party
data from this early period is incredibly robust.
It is. In the 1922 class one race. The famous
author Upton Sinclair ran on the socialist ticket
and secured 6 .28 percent. Which is a solid showing.
But the standout number for me is in the 1932
class three race. A candidate named Robert P.
Shuler running for the Prohibition Party captured
25 .77 percent of the vote. Over a quarter of
the electorate voting for a single issue third
party candidate in a federal Senate race. That
is huge. Exactly. Over half a million votes.
Today, third party candidates often struggle
to break low single digits in statewide federal
races. But the data set from the 1920s and 30s
shows them as highly viable landing pads for
a significant chunk of the electorate. It reinforces
the idea that the political landscape was fluid.
Voters didn't feel locked into a binary choice,
and the structural rules of the time didn't punish
them as heavily for looking outside the traditional
establishment. No, it rewarded building those
unique coalitions. But as the data set moves
into the post -war era, the rules and the behavior
of the electorate shift again. We hit the mid
-century mark, and the data for the 1946 Class
I special election presents another massive structural
oddity. Republican William Noland. wins the seat
with 425 ,273 votes. That translates to 74 .31
% of the total, right? Yes, 74 .31%. But the
source indicates he won this via a write -in
campaign. That is staggering. And his runner
-up, Will Rogers Jr., also secured nearly 16
% as a write -in. Mobilizing hundreds of thousands
of voters to physically write a name on a ballot
requires a level of logistical coordination that
is difficult to fathom. Especially without modern
digital communication. No social media, no email.
It's just pure grassroots organization. It shows
an electorate that was not only highly engaged,
but also capable of bypassing the printed ballot
options entirely to assert its preference. That
level of engagement makes perfect sense when
you look at how aggressively contested the state
was during this period. Moving through the 1950s,
60s and 70s, the data set reads like a persistent
ping pong match between the two major parties.
It's a constant back and forth. In the class
three seat alone, we see Richard Nixon win for
the Republicans in 1950. Right. Then a Republican
George Murphy takes it in 1964. The Democrats
swing it back with John V. Tunney in 1970. Then
Republican S .I. Hayakawa swings it right back
in 1976. That volatility is a defining characteristic
of mid -century California politics. The state
was a quintessential battleground. It really
was. The post -war population boom brought in
wildly diverse demographics and neither party
had a structural lock on the state. The electorate
was constantly reevaluating its leadership. Resulting
in this aggressive seat swapping. Exactly. Which
is a stark contrast to how the state is often
viewed today. You get the sense from these columns
that control of California's representation in
Washington was never a foregone conclusion during
those decades. It wasn't. Candidates had to fight
inch by inch for the center of the electorate.
The data clearly shows the center was willing
to change its mind every six years. But that
volatility hits a brick wall as we move down
the spreadsheet. It really does. Here's where
it gets really interesting. We arrive at the
filestone year of 1992. 1992 is the great structural
anomaly of the late 20th century in this data
set. Because of a midterm vacancy, the staggering
of the classes we discussed earlier was temporarily
overridden. Right. The usual rules didn't apply.
Both the class one special election and the class
three regular election ended up on the exact
same ballot. Voters went to the polls in November
1992 and effectively selected their entire Senate
delegation in a single afternoon. The statistical
likelihood of both seats opening up simultaneously
like that is rare. But the consequences of that
specific election are what truly altered the
state's historical trajectory. The results were
a definitive sweep for the Democrats. Diane Feinstein
won the Class 1 special election against Republican
John Seymour with 54 .29%. And on that same ballot.
On that very same ballot, Barbara Boxer won the
Class 3 regular election against Republican Bruce
Hershenson with 47 .90%. When you trace those
two names down the rest of the spreadsheet, you
see the complete end of the ping pong era. That
single day of voting locked in the state Senate
representation for a quarter of a century. Decades
of stability. Boxer holds the class three seat
through reelections in 1998, 2004 and 2010. Feinstein
holds the class one seat through an incredible
run 1994, 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2018. This is
a phenomenal streak of incumbency. The data shifts
from a highly volatile back and forth battleground
state to a solid block of long term stability.
It's a night and day difference. The voters made
a dual choice in 1992, and then the data set
just reiterates that choice for decades. It highlights
how a single demographic or cultural shift, if
captured effectively in a concurrent election
year, can completely freeze a political landscape.
The state's center of gravity shifted. Right,
and the incumbency advantage of holding both
seats simultaneously created an almost insurmountable
barrier for the opposition. But just when the
columns start to look entirely predictable, the
source notes reveal the final, massive structural
rule change of our timeline, Proposition 14.
Passed by the voters in 2010. Yes. And Proposition
14 completely rewrote the underlying mechanics
of how general elections operate. By instituting
a top -two primary system. According to the footnotes,
this means all candidates, regardless of party,
run on a single primary ballot. The top two vote
getters advance to November. It doesn't matter
if they are from the same party. Exactly. And
crucially, it explicitly outlaws the very write
in campaigns that guys like William Nolan used
to win back in 1946. General elections are strictly
limited to the top two names. This raises an
important question regarding campaign strategy.
How so? Well. When you implement a top two system
in a state that heavily favors one party, the
general election ceases to be a traditional partisan
battle. Oh, because the minority party gets boxed
out. Exactly. You create an environment where
multiple candidates from the majority party risk
splitting their own base in the primary. Or conversely,
they succeed and lock the minority party out
of the general election entirely. And we see
that lockout effect immediately in the data set.
In the 2016 Class 3 election, the general ballot
didn't feature a Republican and a Democrat. Democrat
Kamala Harris faced off against another Democrat,
Loretta Sanchez. With Harris winning 61 .60%.
Right. Two years later, in the 2018 Class 1 election,
Democrat Dianne Feinstein ran against fellow
Democrat Kevin DeLeon. That intra -party dynamic
changes the entire calculus for the voter. It
has to. For decades, the data set shows an electorate
relying on the basic shorthand of partisan labels.
You look for the D or the R. And you make your
choice. But when you are forced to choose between
two candidates from the exact same party platform,
those labels are completely useless. Voters are
forced to parse regional alliances, highly specific
policy nuances, and individual candidate histories.
It shifts the bitterest electoral fights from
the general election to the primary. And then
it forces the minority party voters to act as
a tiebreaker between two candidates they may
not. inherently support. It's a complete gamification
of the primary process. And looking at the most
recent data entries for Alex Padilla in 2022
and Adam Schiff in 2024, the numbers reflect
this modern consolidated era. It's a whole new
paradigm. Interestingly, both of those recent
cycles also featured concurrent special and regular
elections on the same ballot, echoing that 1992
anomaly we talked about. The mechanics of the
ballot might mirror 1992, but the raw numbers
involved in those modern races. are operating
on an entirely different scale. That is the data
point that really puts this whole timeline into
perspective for me. In 2024, Adam Schiff received
9 ,036 ,252 votes to win the full -term Class
1 seat. Over 9 million votes for a single candidate.
The sheer administrative and communicative undertaking
of a modern statewide race is staggering when
you view it against the historical baseline.
It really is. So what does this all mean? We've
traced a data set from the era of state legislature
appointments to the direct democracy of the 17th
Amendment. We watched Hiram Johnson manipulate
cross -nomination rules to hit 94 percent of
the vote. We saw third parties like the Prohibitionists
command a quarter of the electorate. We track
the volatile, right and heavy ping -pong era
of the mid -century, the abrupt stabilization
in 1992, and finally, the strategic intra -party
showdowns engineered by the top two primary system
of Proposition 14. It is quite the journey. For
you listening, the overarching lesson of this
data set is that electoral outcomes are rarely
just about the candidates' personalities. They
are fundamentally dictated by the structural
rules of the era. That is the essential takeaway.
The electorate behaves according to the boundaries
it is. given. Beautifully said. But as a final
thought to ponder, I want you to consider the
physical reality of the numbers we just discussed.
In 1914, James D. Phelan secured his United States
Senate seat with roughly 279 ,000 votes. In 2024,
Adam Schiff required over 9 million votes to
perform the exact same constitutional duty, representing
the exact same geographic borders in the exact
same chamber of Congress. The scale is just massive.
That means the required base of popular support
has multiplied by more than 30 times over a century.
I encourage you to explore on your own what that
massive scale means for the future of representation.
How does a politician authentically communicate
with an electorate of nearly 40 million people?
When the scale of democracy expands that drastically,
the very nature of human representation has to
adapt to survive. It completely reframes how
you look at the concept of a popular mandate.
The numbers in this spreadsheet do more than
just list the winners. They map the changing
physics of our electoral system. Thank you for
joining us on this deep dive. We hope you walk
away with a new lens for viewing political data.
Keep looking for the structural rules, keep analyzing
the numbers, and we'll see you next time.