Reply #10: Another perspective on California voter attitude shifts from Dan Walters

[slackmaster]

Here is an excerpt to whet your appetite:

...The Field Research Corp., the state's oldest polling organization, charts that change – and the even greater change in the larger population – in its latest examination of the state's electorate, surveying thousands of Californians about who they are and how they orient themselves politically and confirming the previous anecdotal observations.

The Field Poll contrasts 1978 – a watershed year in which the landmark property tax limit, Proposition 13, was passed – with 2009. Among its findings:

California's white non-Latino population has dipped 26.1 percent over the last 31 years, but the proportion of white voters has dropped by just 18 percent, meaning the ethnic gap between voters and nonvoters has actually increased.

The share of the electorate held by the two major parties, more than 90 percent in 1978, has dropped to under 76 percent as the ranks of independents have swelled from less than 8 percent to 20 percent, with most of that shift coming at the expense of Democrats....

Full opinion piece at http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/aug/05/lz1e5walters222330-behind-californias-dysfunction/?uniontrib