Is a ‘red wave’ sweeping Orange County? Why Republicans Are Already Celebrating the 2024 Election – Orange County Register

The red wave sweeping the country this election cycle could very well be heading to Orange County.

For those unfamiliar, a “red wave” refers to significant gains made by the Republican Party.

And the Republican Party’s victories have certainly been significant already this election cycle. Former President Donald Trump did hindered his return to the White Houseand so is the GOP established to control the Senate next year too. The battle for the House has only increased, but in recent days more congressional races, including in Orange County, have been called for Republicans, building confidence among the party.

“This could be the biggest conservative shift in this country since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political messaging at USC and UC Berkeley.

There are already signs that Orange County may be playing a role in that rightward trajectory.

Former baseball player Steve Garvey was defeated in the race for the US Senate by Representative Adam Schiff, a contest that was called almost immediately after the polls closed on Tuesday. But as of Friday in Orange County, Garvey led Schiff by nearly 40,000 votes.

Rep. Young Kim’s re-election bid for California’s 40th Congressional District left him with a relatively competitive seat ahead of Election Day. has already been called in her favor.

Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Anaheim, is still ahead of Democratic challenger Derek Tran the latest figures have been released in California’s 45th congressional district.

On a more local level Huntington Beach’s list of conservative candidates appears ready to take over the city council.

Randall Avila, the executive director of the Orange County Republican Party, is excited about the early results so far — but he’s not surprised.

“We stayed on crime, we stayed on inflation, we stayed on immigration,” Avila said. “We didn’t get sidetracked on many of the issues Democrats focused on, but the exit polls showed they ultimately didn’t resonate with voters. I think the voters in Orange County know that we are in California, so issues like abortion have already been decided in our state.”

National exit polls suggest this that the economy was a major point of frustration for voters, while abortion did not emerge as the decisive issue that Democrats had anticipated. In some theaters it is even the case a significant number of voters have chosen to enshrine abortion rights measures while simultaneously marking their ballots for Trump.

Republicans have also made progress in registering voters before Election Day.

Two weeks after Election Day, Democrats accounted for 36.83% of registered voters in Orange County. according to the State Secretary’s reportwhile Republicans made up 33.99% and no party preference 22.99%.

Of course, that still gave the advantage to the Democrats. But if you look at the October 2022 numbers, Republicans added more than 30,000 voters on their docket, while Democrats only secured an additional 3,000.

Trump, who did not win in Orange County in his two other attempts to win the presidency, crawled to an early lead as the results were tallied. But on Friday evening, Vice President Kamala Harris was out with an extremely slim lead of about 3,300 votes.

That could partly explain why Trump has never come out on top in a general election in Orange County before. In 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took over the county, and in 2020 it was President Joe Biden, who ended a Democratic presidential drought in the county dating back to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.

The 2018 blue wave, in which Democrats flipped four congressional seats in Orange County and made gains in state and local elections, was an important wake-up call, Avila said. This is how 2019 was, when Democrats took control of voter registration in the county.

“The first thing we did within a month of the defeat was go out in person, go door to door to voters with no party preference who were previously Republican, and ask them, ‘Why did you leave the party?’ And with that information, we started thinking about how we can make a comeback,” he said.

How much all that work will pay off this election remains to be seen.

In two other closely watched congressional races in Orange County, Democrats maintained a slim lead Friday evening.

While trailing earlier this week, state Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, surged ahead of former Assemblymember Scott Baugh, a Republican, in the open 47th Congressional District on Friday evening. And Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, still holds a narrow lead over Republican Matt Gunderson, with 51.1% of the vote.

Ada Briceño, chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County, said it is too early to really analyze the election results.

“I want to be fair to the voters and the election workers who put in a tremendous amount of hours and don’t make predictions,” Briceño said.

But the numbers so far “reflect a move to the right, but it will be a while before we know how far a move is happening,” Schnur said.

“It is absolutely impossible to be patient as votes are counted in the days and weeks after Election Day, but there is no other option,” he added. “We will know who will hold these seats sometime between now and the end of the year. Until then, there is little to do but wait.”

On Friday, the Registrar of Voters estimated that more than 323,000 ballots needed to be processed throughout Orange County.