SACRAMENTO, CA - Although the national Republican wave seemed to hit a breakwater at the Sierra Nevadas, the Golden State’s election results should not be seen as a simple case of triumphant California liberalism in an otherwise Republican sea. The real story is more complicated. First, look at the governor’s race.

If there was a nationwide trend in governors’ races it was that entrenched parties were thrown out. Longtime Republican strongholds in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois went to the Democrats. And longtime Democrat bastions such as Hawaii, Maryland, and Georgia elected Republican governors. Even in Massachusetts, which elected Republican Mitt Romney despite GOP control of the governor’s office for 12 years, the Republican candidate successfully portrayed himself as the outsider running against the entrenched power structure in Boston.

California experienced the same “throw-the-bums out” trend. Gray Davis won by only five percentage points despite spending more than $60 million. Davis was so unpopular that he only just eked out a victory that for an incumbent should have been a landslide.

The slant that California is too liberal and will now only elect Democrats and, occasionally, moderate Republicans fails to consider that the most conservative statewide Republican nominee, state senator Tom McClintock, came closest to winning his race and, indeed, may still win the controller’s office depending on the absentee ballot count.

The result of state and local ballot propositions failed to indicate that the state is irretrievably liberal. True, large state and local bond measures were approved. However, state voters rejected a proposal favored by minority advocates and liberal organizations like the League of Women Voters that would have made it extremely easy to register to vote on election day (a change widely viewed as more favorable for Democrats). Further, in liberal San Francisco voters approved a drastic cut in cash aid to the homeless, while in equally liberal Santa Monica voters rejected a bad-for-business “living wage” measure.

The “California-as-liberal-bastion” argument is also complicated by the exceedingly low turnout by Latinos and African Americans. The electorate that went to the polls was mainly white, and the white vote actually went slightly to Simon. Observers such as Bruce Cain of UC Berkeley and Prop. 209 co-author Tom Wood have noted that the key to winning future elections in California may lie not in cobbling together a liberal white/minority coalition, but rather getting a clear majority of the increasingly swing conservative-moderate white vote.

Indeed, as minorities become a larger proportion of the population, there will be greater likelihood of white block voting statewide which will both increase the leverage of more conservative whites and put the brakes on enactment of a down-the-line liberal agenda. A local-level example of this phenomenon occurred in Los Angeles where moderate and conservative whites provided James Hahn with pivotal support in his successful mayoral campaign against several liberal Latino contenders.

As a practical matter, the massive state budget deficits will force Gov. Davis and legislative Democrats to shelve any huge liberal spending schemes. And if the governor and his allies enact large tax increases, as many suspect they will do, then the political situation could change dramatically given California voters’ continuing aversion to tax increases.

Liberals in California may have won a skirmish last week, but the outcome of the philosophical war is still to be determined.

Lance Izumi is a Senior Fellow in California Studies at the California-based Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. He can be reached via email at lizumi@pacificresearch.org.