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First of all there is an important number missing from the voter regestration breakdown: About 15% of California voters are independent (non-partisan; known here as Declined To State or DTS). They are mostly wigglers who vote the person more than the party. Most of them are former Democrats or Republicans who left their major party because it went too far to the left or too far to the right respectively.
Tom McClintock represents the solid core of traditional conservative Republicans who make up something like 15% of the voters. Those folks will vote for the farthest RW conservative in any election no matter who is running. McClintock's perceived honesty, experience, maturity, and demeanor attracted another chunk of voters from the subset of moderate Republicans who cannot stand Arnold Schwarzenegger, and yet another from that floating cloud of DTS voters. I have to admit that even though I am put off by his anti-abortion stance and a few other issues I thought he was the most competetent among the candidates to handle the nuts and bolts of the job. Technically the best but definitely unelectable.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is not considered much of a Republican by most Republicans. He's very centrist and even liberal on many social issues. You will see a lot of posts on DU blasting the idea of someone being a social liberal and fiscal conservative, but the reality is that's how many of us (yes, me too) in California think and vote.
The Democratic leadership in the state legislature abandoned Gray Davis the moment the recall started taking shape, if not before then. They've never been very friendly to him (probably partly his fault) but they handed him a giant stinking turd of a bill called Sanate Bill 60 one month before the election. SB60 is the poorly thought out measure to allow illegal aliens to get driver licenses. Not a bad idea per se, but it's a terrible bill and Davis THOUGHT he faced a loss of support from the public whether he vetoed it or signed it. He reversed his earlier position on the issue and signed SB60 hoping to garner support from the Latino community, which was a terrible miscalculation because Latinos have opinions as diverse as the population at large in this state. Tossing a bone to other brown-skinned Spanish speakers did not ingratiate California's mostly educated, affluent, sophisticated Latino population.
Two or three days after Davis signed SB60 a Field poll revealed that 70% of California voters are opposed to the bill. Poor Gray Davis must have shit a brick when he saw those results.
The Democratic Party again failed to rally behind Davis - Cruz Bustamante (the Lt. Governor) broke ranks and entered the fray as a replacement candidate. But Bustamante's weak attempt to cast himself as a representative of all Latinos because he had worked the fields as a child backfired on him too. And he pissed off the labor unions which were his other great hope. Negative publicity about Cruz's involvement in a student organization called MEChA (look it up) eroded more support from him, and he basically went into free-fall after the Jerry Springer style debate of September 24.
So who's left? A well-known popular actor in a state where acting is one of the most noble professions. An immigrant. A self-made millionaire who doesn't owe anything to anyone (at least not visibly) and is married to a Kennedy descendent.
Californians usually put their diverse self-interests before loyalty to a political party or their race or ethnicity. DTS voters are the fastest growing segment of the electorate because the major parties have been unable to keep up with the ever-widening constellation of values and beliefs and ideals that Californians encompass. To me the key is not as many here suggest for a party to distingush itself by moving farther to an extreme, but by reigning in the degree to which the government fucks around with peoples' personal lives. We want government to keep the schools working and the roads paved. We want leaders who are not beholden to Indian tribes or prison guards or unions or other special interests. We care about our families, our homes, and our futures, not about building some grand progressive society. People in this case chose the devil they didn't know over the devil they knew too well.
That's why almost half of the voters chose Arnold Schwarzenegger, and if history is a guide nobody will believe me even though I'm usually right.
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