By Steve Sailer
09/17/2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a03DqKvn6U4Here’s a new ad from Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg’s Cheap Labor lobby FWD.us, “The Parable of Pete Wilson” about how supporting Proposition 187 in 1994 doomed the Republican Party in California.
I realize that back in 1994, Mr. Zuckerberg was probably less interested in election data than in Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, but there’s this thing called the Internet and you can use it to look up old numbers to see if somebody is trying to pull your leg. He should try it.
I’ve gone over this a million times over the years, but this media myth is just a retconning of history. The GOP won California in 9 out of 10 Presidential elections from 1952-1988, but the historic turning point wasn’t after 1994, it was before it: in 1992 Bill Clinton whomped the incumbent Republican president George H.W. Bush 46-33 in California. And the Democrats won two open seat Senatorial elections in 1992: Barbara Boxer won 48-43 and Diane Feinstein won 54-38.
Contrary to the myth, the GOP candidate did relatively better in 1996 than in 1992. I wrote in VDARE:
Indeed, the GOP candidate did better in California in the Presidential election of 1996 than in 1992, both in absolute terms and relative to the whole country. Bush lost the U.S. in 1992 by 5.5 points and California by 13.3 points, while Dole lost the country in 1996 by 8.5 points and California by only 12.9 points. So, relative to their dire performance in the whole country, the GOP Presidential candidate closed the gap in California by 3.5 points from 1992 to 1996.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.