The Battle for California's 20 Million Voters Came Early This Year

[left-of-center2012]

It is simple math — with 415 delegates, California has more electoral power than all four early states combined. And while the political world waited for, then pored over, the partial results from not quite 170,000 voters in Iowa, there are currently about 20 million registered voters in California, and roughly 15 million of them received mail-in ballots this week. But this year, state officials moved voting day to Super Tuesday, the earliest the California primary has been since 2008.

California matters now. And the earlier primary means that presidential candidates are spending time and money in parts of the state that rarely see big-name politicians of any kind. Democratic Senate candidates and would-be governors often skip over the Central Valley, the agricultural heart of California, reasoning there are far more votes to be had outside the relatively rural and conservative part of the state.

Just as in other Super Tuesday states, Michael Bloomberg is spending lavishly to get on the airwaves here — so far paying nearly $34 million to advertise on television across the state, including roughly $1.8 million on Spanish-language stations, according to Advertising Analytics. Mr. Sanders’s campaign has spent roughly $3 million on television in California so far.

So far, Mr. Bloomberg has 220 staff members throughout the state, a number his campaign expects to grow to 800 by the end of the month. Mr. Sanders’s campaign has about 90 organizers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-california.html

[Laelth]

1. Utterly reasonable.

California should matter. I am pleased to see that its citizens' concerns are getting the attention from the Democratic Party that they deserve.

-Laelth

[MineralMan]

2. Bloomberg is probably doing the smartest thing of all the candidates.

While they were flooding Iowa with workers, and then New Hampshire, Bloomberg has been flooding everyone's TVs in the Super Tuesday states with ads, most aired during the news hours on local ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates. Still, the rest of the pack is totally focused on next week's primary, and the one after that and the one after that. I haven't seen any candidate's ads except for Bloomberg's here in Minnesota. None. I've seen multiple Bloomberg ads every day for over a month now.

The old "early primaries" campaign strategy may just about be about to break down. By the time the rest of the candidates get started, Super Tuesday will be here. It's two days less than four weeks from today.

California is just one of the states involved. Texas is the other big state with plenty of delegates. And there are all the rest, combined, which send way more delegates than all four for the early states.

Watch for a big shift in the standings on March 4.

[left-of-center2012]

3. Yes

While the other candidates have beem shooting it out in Iowa and New Hampshire,
Bloomberg is flooding the Super Tuesday states, etc with workers, field offices, and ads.

[Retrograde]

5. Bloomberg has noticed that elections are changing

and it's no longer a "first everybody caucuses in this state and then everybody votes in that one" situation. Elections no longer last one day, unlike the media's apparent attention span. Early voting and voting by mail are becoming more common. California's primary election runs from Feb. 3 to late March, when the counties have to get their final tallies in: because the state insists on verifying every provisional ballot (and gives mailed ballots 3 days after the polls close to get to the county offices) the numbers reported by the media on election night are just the first snapshot. (Confession: my favorite site post election is the CA SoS's page on unprocessed ballots).

I give Bloomberg props for a lot of things, but I'm still not voting for him this round.

[Kentonio]

6. It must be nice having a basically bottomless warchest

While the other candidates have to raise money and actually carefully ration it.

[MineralMan]

7. Yes, I'm sure it is.

[Retrograde]

4. Aaw, they finally noticed!

We actually started voting on Monday; I got my ballot yesterday. Not seeing much active campaigning (but then I don't watch live TV much), just a couple of yard signs here for Yang, which have been up for months, and one for a local bond measure that's on the ballot.

[David__77]

8. I got my ballot yesterday.

My husbands came today.

I really appreciate the change in voting laws in California. It’s set the stage nicely for increased participation. I’ll drop mine off close to Election Day.

It’s interesting how early voting dampens the impact of short term ups and downs of “momentum.”

Quite a primary!

[Garrett78]

9. I'm one of those 20 million. CA usually votes on Super Tuesday. 2016 was an exception.

And so was 2012, but it didn't matter since we had the incumbent president.

I'm hopeful that Bloomberg will get his ass kicked.