The 2020 United States presidential election in California was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. California voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump, and running mate Vice President Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his running mate Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California. In the 2020 election, California had 55 electoral votes in the Electoral College, the most of any state. Biden won by a wide margin, as was expected; however, California was one of seven states and DC where Trump received a larger percentage of the two-party vote than he did in 2016. This election also marked the first time since 2004 that the Republican candidate won more than one million votes in Los Angeles County due to increased turnout.
California is considered a safe blue state in presidential elections due to large concentrations of Democratic voters in urban regions such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Diego. As predicted, Biden easily carried California on election day, earning 63.5% of the vote and a margin of 29.2% over Trump. Biden earned the highest percentage of the vote in the state for any candidate since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, although Biden's margin of victory was slightly smaller than Hillary Clinton's 30.1% in 2016, making it one of six states in which Trump improved on his 2016 margin. In California with his record 11.1 million votes received, Biden became the first, and as of 2024 the only, candidate in any race in U.S. history to win more than 10 million votes in a single state, while Trump received the most votes a Republican had ever received in a state to that point, narrowly besting his vote total in Texas, a state that he won; four years later his Texas vote total would set a new Republican record. Biden's vote margin was the largest vote margin for a presidential candidate in a singular state. California was also one of five states in the nation in which Biden's victory margin was larger than 1 million raw votes, the others being New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois.
Per exit polls by Edison Research, Biden dominated such key constituencies in the state as Latinos (75%), African Americans (82%), Asian Americans (76%), and union households (63%). Post-election analysis by Cook Political Report showed Trump made inroads with some Asian American constituencies, particularly Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters. Biden flipped Butte and Inyo Counties into the Democratic column; they had not voted Democratic since 2008 and 1964, respectively. Biden's victory in Orange County was only the second time a Democrat carried the county since 1936, as well as only the fourth time in the county's history. In contrast, while he improved his total vote share by nearly three percentage points, Trump did not flip any counties and his main regions of strength came from Republican strongholds in Gold Country, Shasta Cascade, and parts of the Central Valley. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla certified the results on December 4, and took Harris's seat in the Senate upon her resignation to become Vice President, having been appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom.
Primary elections
In a departure from previous election cycles, California held its primaries on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020. Early voting began several weeks earlier. Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination on March 17, 2020, defeating several longshot candidates, most notably former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld. Kamala Harris, the state's junior U.S. senator, was among the Democratic candidates declared until she dropped out on December 3, 2019. Representative Eric Swalwell from the 15th district was also a Democratic candidate but dropped out of the race on July 8, 2019. Other prominent state figures, including former Governor Jerry Brown, current Governor Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti declined to run.
Republican primary
The Republican Party's primary campaign was dominated by a lawsuit over the President's taxes. The suit alleges that the new requirement for several years of a candidate's taxes was unconstitutional and onerous. The law was blocked in September 2019 while State Supreme court heard testimony and made a ruling.
As a contingency, the Republican state committee changed its delegate selection process, turning the primary into a mere "beauty contest" and setting up an emergency state convention to Trump's delegate choices. If Trump were allowed on the ballot, the convention would be canceled and the so-called "winner-take-most" rules, which require a challenger to get 20% of the vote, would apply.
Incumbent Trump was allowed on the ballot, and the contingency convention was canceled.
Democratic primary
Candidates began filing their paperwork on November 4, 2019, and the final list was announced on December 9.
Leading California Democrats complained that Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren were snubbing the state by refusing to attend a forum at the State's "endorsement convention". Early voting began on February 11 and ended the day before primary day.
Libertarian primary
The Libertarian Party of California permitted non-affiliated voters to vote in their presidential primary.
American Independent primary
The American Independent Party permitted non-affiliated voters to vote in their presidential primary.
General election
Polling
%support0102030405060703/25/20182/25/20207/31/202010/21/2020TrumpBidenJorgensenHawkinsOtherOpinion polling for the 2020 United States p...
Electors
Voters in California cast their ballots for members of the Electoral College, called electors, rather than directly for president and vice president. California was allocated 55 electors because it had 53 congressional districts and two senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot must submit a list of 55 electors who pledge to vote for their candidate and their running mate. Whoever wins the most votes in the state is awarded all 55 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to support their party's nominees, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than their party's candidate is known as a faithless elector.
The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 15, 2020, to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself does not meet as one body. Instead, the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitals. All 55 California Democratic electors cast their votes for former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris from California, as pledged. The electoral vote was tabulated and certified by Congress in a joint session on January 6, 2021, per the Electoral Count Act.
These individuals were nominated by each party to serve as the state's members of the 2020 Electoral College should their party's ticket win the state:
Results
Biden won California with a smaller margin of victory than Hillary Clinton in 2016. Nevertheless, he performed well in most urban areas of the state. Biden is also the first candidate for any statewide race in American history to receive over ten million votes.
By county
Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic
- Inyo (largest municipality: Bishop)
- Butte (largest municipality: Chico)
By congressional district
Biden won 46 of the 53 congressional districts in California, including four that were flipped or held by Republicans in Congress.
Analysis
Joe Biden won California by a landslide margin of 29.2%. Despite Biden's overall victory closely mirroring Clinton's, under a point behind her margin, there were large swings underneath the statewide margins. Biden lost ground in large diverse counties while improving in mostly whiter and more suburban counties. While Trump yet again lost Los Angeles County by a landslide and yet again received less than 30% of the vote in the county, he improved his standing in Los Angeles County, thanks to growth in mainly Latino neighborhoods in the Gateway Cities and the San Fernando Valley, alongside improvements in mainly Asian communities in the San Gabriel Valley. Trump also managed to gain in white neighborhoods as well, with visible gains made in Beverly Hills and other Westside communities, mainly because of the region's high Jewish population, Burbank and Glendale in the eastern San Fernando Valley, and the Valley's southern wealthy neighborhoods such as Encino and Tarzana. California is also one of the seven states (along with Illinois, Arkansas, Nevada, Utah, Florida, and Hawaii) as well as the District of Columbia in which Trump's margin increased from 2016.
While Biden won Santa Clara County by a landslide margin of 47.4%, his margins shrank below that of Hillary Clinton's 2016 margin, 52.1%, in the county. His margins slightly shrank in the more suburban communities of Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, even improving in very wealthy cities like Los Altos Hills and Saratoga, but his margins fell in the heavily Asian parts of San Jose, and Milpitas, which Biden won by a landslide, as Trump's comparison of Biden's proposed policies to socialism and communism drove Vietnamese American voters towards him. The issue over China in the South China Sea helped swing Vietnamese Americans, as well as Filipino American voters to the Republican Party. Nonetheless, Trump still received a small 25% of the vote in Santa Clara County, underperforming President Bush in 2004, John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. Trump also gained in Alameda and San Francisco County, but his improvements were smaller than Santa Clara County and Los Angeles County. Meanwhile, Biden gained in the more white and suburban San Diego County and Riverside County. In the former, Biden's improvements in wealthy suburban areas, like Carlsbad and Encinitas, alongside gains in more working-class Escondido and Oceanside, helped overcome Trump's growth in the more Hispanic neighborhoods in southern San Diego County. In Riverside County, Trump lost ground in whiter more Republican territory in the southern part of the county like Menifee and Temecula, and in very liberal communities like Palm Springs in the Coachella Valley, which overcame Biden's decline in Hispanic communities towards the county's northwest, including Moreno Valley and Perris. Trump also gained grounds in certain areas like West Covina and Carson.
Outside the large population centers and the Inland Empire, both parties largely ran in line with their 2016 performances. In the Central Valley, Biden's margin was roughly unchanged, though he lost some support in the northern counties like Merced and Stanislaus while gaining in the more Republican southern counties around Kern (Bakersfield). Biden improved by a point in Sacramento County but saw visible growth in suburban Placer County. However, Trump overwhelmingly outperformed his 2016 performance in rural and heavily Hispanic Imperial County, gaining 17 points. Biden's margin was higher than John Kerry's or Al Gore's in Imperial County, but underperformed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.