How has the Sacramento area voted for president? We break it down for the last 100 years
How has the region voted in past presidential elections?
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 by the widest voting margin seen locally in a presidential election since 1964. Can Kamala Harris match or beat Biden’s 17-point win?
The Sacramento region has a long history of backing winners in presidential races. A plurality of voters in the four-county area supported the eventual winner in 21 of the last 25 presidential elections, according to a Bee review of Secretary of State data.
One of the region’s few misses came exactly 100 years ago, when most local voters backed Robert M. La Follett, who was supported by the Socialist Party.
From 1932 to 1968, the region consistently backed Democratic candidates, with Franklin D. Roosevelt logging the most lopsided win of the last 100 years when he was re-elected in 1936 with 77% of the region’s vote. The only exception during this period was 1952, when a slim majority of the region’s voters backed Republican Dwight Eisenhower. During this period, the region backed the eventual loser only twice: Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
Results were mixed from 1972 to 2004, with the region often backing Republican candidates one election and Democrats the next. During this period, Ronald Reagan won the most lopsided victory by a Republican during the last century, earning about 56% of the region’s vote in 1984.
From 2008, the region has voted for Democrats. The trend has exacerbated since Donald Trump began running for president. During the last presidential election, Joe Biden beat Trump by 17 percentage points in the four-county region — the biggest margin of victory since Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater in 1964 by 32 percentage points.
No polls focus only on the Sacramento region. Statewide polls show Harris with a smaller lead over Trump in California than Biden’s enjoyed at this point in 2020.
Placer and El Dorado counties
Placer and El Dorado counties consistently back Republicans for president — and have done so for decades. But it hasn’t always been that way.
A plurality of Placer County voters usually backed Democrats from the 1930s through the 1960s. The county was still mostly rural back then, with far fewer residents.
Voters vacillated between Democrats and Republicans during the 1970s, and then Ronald Reagan came along, and Placer County has voted for Republicans ever since.
The story is mostly the same in El Dorado County. The exception is that El Dorado toggled between Republicans and Democrats for a longer period: the 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s.
Yolo and Sacramento counties
A majority of Yolo County voters have backed the Democratic presidential candidate in every presidential race since 1932, with the exception of the 1952 election, when Republican and World War II Hero Dwight Eisenhower beat Democrat Adlai Stevenson.
Even Ronald Reagan couldn’t win in the county, though he came within a few points during his landslide victory over Mondale.
As the largest county in the region, Sacramento County presidential election results largely mirror the results of the region as a whole, especially in the years before Placer and El Dorado counties became suburban meccas.