• Source: 1978 California gubernatorial election

The 1978 California gubernatorial election occurred on November 7, 1978. The Democratic incumbent, Jerry Brown, defeated the Republican nominee Attorney General Evelle J. Younger and independent candidate Ed Clark in a landslide.




Primary election results


In the Republican gubernatorial primary, California Attorney General Evelle Younger (who was the only Republican elected to a statewide office in the post-Watergate Democratic onslaught in the 1974 California general election) defeated Ed Davis (State Senator and former Los Angeles Police Chief), Ken Maddy (State Senate Minority Leader from Fresno), and Pete Wilson (mayor of San Diego). Incumbent Jerry Brown had only minor opposition in the Democratic Primary. The primary election included Proposition 13, the initiative authored by Howard Jarvis which sought to drastically reduce property taxes and change the way property taxes were calculated. Younger and most Republicans supported Proposition 13 while Brown and most Democrats opposed it. The initiative passed with 64.8% of the vote; it is still in effect, and many other states passed similar laws.




= Republican Party

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= Democratic Party

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= American Independent Party

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= Peace and Freedom Party

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General election


The primary battle left Younger short of money, while Brown had a much larger campaign fund and won reelection in a landslide.




= Results by county

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Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic

Alpine
Amador
Butte
Calaveras
Contra Costa
El Dorado
Kern
Lake
Marin
Mariposa
Monterey
Napa
Nevada
Orange
Riverside
San Benito
San Diego
San Joaquin
San Luis Obispo
Santa Barbara
Stanislaus
Tuolumne
Ventura



Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican

Del Norte
Imperial




Analysis


Jerry Brown's landslide victory ended three of the remaining four very long streaks of Republican dominance in California counties. Brown was the first Democrat to ever carry Alpine County in a gubernatorial election since its establishment in 1864. The same was true for Orange County; it had always backed the Republican candidate since its establishment in 1889. Meanwhile, Santa Barbara County backed a Democratic candidate for the first time since 1882. After this election, the lone county with a long history of backing Republicans was Mono County, which had never backed a Democratic candidate since its founding in 1861 and would not vote Democratic until 1998.
Conversely, Jerry Brown remains the most recent Democrat to carry any of the following counties: Butte County, Calaveras County, El Dorado County, Fresno County, Kern County, Lassen County, Madera County, Mariposa County, Placer County, Plumas County, Shasta County, Sierra County, Siskiyou County, Tehama County, Tuolumne County, and Yuba County.




Notes






References

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Ridwan Kamil
• 1978 California gubernatorial election
• 1998 California gubernatorial election
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