2000 United States presidential election in California
The 2000 United States presidential election in California took place on November 7, 2000, as part of the wider 2000 United States presidential election. Voters chose 54 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
California was won by the Democratic ticket of Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee and Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut by 11.8% points over the Republican ticket of Texas Governor George W. Bush and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney of Wyoming.
The state hosted the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles and was slightly contested by both candidates due to a large Hispanic population and a large independent and moderate base surrounding San Diego and Sacramento's suburbs. This was the first time since 1880 in which a winning Republican presidential candidate lost California., Bush is the last Republican candidate to carry Alpine and Mono counties in a presidential election. This was also the first time since 1976 that California did not back the candidate who won the overall presidential election as well.
Primaries
Vice President Al Gore easily defeated Texas Governor George W. Bush in California. Bush campaigned several times in California, but it didn't seem to help as Gore defeated Bush by 11.8%. Bush did make substantial headway in Southern California winning in Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties, including counties located in the Sierra Nevada region and along the borders of Nevada and Oregon. However, Gore overwhelmingly won Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the state and the country. Gore also performed well in the San Francisco Bay Area, though there was a strong third party performance by Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who broke into double digits in Humboldt, Mendocino, and Santa Cruz counties. Notwithstanding Nader's performance, this helped Gore win statewide by a little over 1.3 million votes. California is also almost certainly what helped Gore pull ahead in the national popular vote. Other than Ross Perot in 1992, Independent Presidential candidates aren't typically on the ballot in California, but California's Marxist-Leninist Peace and Freedom Party had lost ballot access, one of its members, Joshua Brown, who lived in Redding, California, filed to run as an Independent. He positioned himself as the only socialist, the only worker, and unlike Nader, he stood for values beyond consumerism. His platform called for abolishing capitalism, abolishing classism, abolishing private property, withering away the repressive state, nationalizing and socializing everything, abolishing all taxation in favor of a North Korean-like society in which social services come from social production, and abolishing the United States and returning all the land to First Nations. His vote was negligible, but he did well in his home county, Shasta County, which propped him up to fourth place. He would use his support to get the Peace and Freedom Party back on the ballot in 2002. Pat Buchanan, Paleoconservative commentator, former advisor to President Ronald Reagan, and two-time Republican Presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996, was on the ballot as the Reform Party's candidate. This was the Party that Ross Perot had started in 1994, but a sizable number of party members, including then-Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, disliked Buchanan. They felt his views were fringe-right, and inconsistent with the Party's moderate, libertarian, fiscally conservative and socially liberal views, and that Buchanan was a Republican double-agent, designed to destroy the party from within, and that he was just trying to use the Reform Party's money to pay off debts he owed from his 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Nader was largely the beneficiary of this. California was called for Gore, right when the polls closed at 11 P.M. EST.Results
Results breakdown
By county
By congressional district
Gore won 33 of 52 congressional districts.| District | Bush | Gore | Representative |
| 41% | 50% | Mike Thompson | |
| 59% | 34% | Wally Herger | |
| 51% | 44% | Doug Ose | |
| 58% | 37% | John Doolittle | |
| 37% | 57% | Bob Matsui | |
| 30% | 62% | Lynn Woolsey | |
| 27% | 69% | George Miller | |
| 15% | 77% | Nancy Pelosi | |
| 12% | 79% | Barbara Lee | |
| 45% | 51% | Ellen Tauscher | |
| 50% | 47% | Richard Pombo | |
| 27% | 67% | Tom Lantos | |
| 30% | 66% | Pete Stark | |
| 32% | 62% | Anna Eshoo | |
| 38% | 57% | Tom Campbell | |
| 38% | 57% | Mike Honda | |
| 32% | 64% | Zoe Lofgren | |
| 33% | 60% | Sam Farr | |
| 53% | 44% | Gary Condit | |
| 58% | 38% | George Radanovich | |
| 48% | 50% | Cal Dooley | |
| 64% | 33% | Bill Thomas | |
| 49% | 45% | Lois Capps | |
| 47% | 48% | Elton Gallegly | |
| 38% | 58% | Brad Sherman | |
| 51% | 45% | Buck McKeon | |
| 25% | 70% | Howard Berman | |
| 41% | 53% | Jim Rogan | |
| 41% | 53% | Adam Schiff | |
| 47% | 49% | David Dreier | |
| 22% | 72% | Henry Waxman | |
| 19% | 75% | Xavier Becerra | |
| 27% | 69% | Matthew G. Martínez | |
| 27% | 69% | Hilda Solis | |
| 13% | 83% | Diane Watson | |
| 15% | 83% | Lucille Roybal-Allard | |
| 30% | 67% | Grace Napolitano | |
| 12% | 86% | Maxine Waters | |
| 44% | 51% | Steven T. Kuykendall | |
| 44% | 51% | Jane Harman | |
| 15% | 83% | Juanita Millender-McDonald | |
| 37% | 58% | Steve Horn | |
| 53% | 43% | Ed Royce | |
| 56% | 39% | Jerry Lewis | |
| 50% | 47% | Gary Miller | |
| 39% | 57% | Joe Baca | |
| 52% | 44% | Ken Calvert | |
| 49% | 47% | Mary Bono | |
| 56% | 40% | Dana Rohrabacher | |
| 42% | 54% | Loretta Sánchez | |
| 58% | 39% | Christopher Cox | |
| 60% | 36% | Ron Packard | |
| 60% | 36% | Darrell Issa | |
| 42% | 53% | Brian Bilbray | |
| 42% | 53% | Susan Davis | |
| 37% | 59% | Bob Filner | |
| 55% | 41% | Duke Cunningham | |
| 54% | 41% | Duncan Hunter |
Electors
Technically the voters of California cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. California is allocated 54 electors because it has 52 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 54 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all 54 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 18, 2000 to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.
The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All were pledged to and voted for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman:
- Sunil Aghi
- Amy Arambula
- Rachel Binah
- R. Stephen Bollinger
- Roberts Braden
- Laura Karolina Capps
- Anni Chung
- Joseph A. Cislowski
- Sheldon Cohn
- Thor Emblem
- Elsa Favila
- John Freidenrich
- Cecelia Fuentes
- Glen Fuller
- James Garrison
- Sally Goehring
- Florence Gold
- Jill S. Hardy
- Therese Horsting
- Georgie Huff
- Robert Eugene Hurd
- Harriet A. Ingram
- Robert Jordan
- John Koza
- John Laird
- N. Mark Lam
- Manuel M. Lopez
- Henry Lozano
- David Mann
- Beverly Martin
- R. Keith McDonald
- Carol D. Norberg
- Ron Oberndorfer
- Gerard Orozco
- Trudy Owens
- Gregory S. Pettis
- Flo Rene Pickett
- Theodore H. Plant
- Art Pulaski
- Eloise Reyes
- Alex Arthur Reza
- C. Craig Roberts
- Jason Rodríguez
- Luis D. Rojas
- Howard L. Schock
- Lane Sherman
- David A. Torres
- Larry Trullinger
- Angelo K. Tsakopoulos
- Richard Valle
- Karen Waters
- Don Wilcox
- William K. Wong
- Rosalind Wyman