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    • Harris vs. Trump; How will Ventura County, Simi Valley vote?
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    Harris vs. Trump; How will Ventura County, Simi Valley vote?

    Online Niel Posted on

    Voters in a Ventura County city have chosen the winner of the last two presidential elections.

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    For nearly 100 years, Ventura County has been in nearly perfect step with voters across the country in presidential elections.

    Voters in the county favored Ronald Reagan in the landslide victory that brought him to the White House in 1980 and then again in his successful re-election bid. They voted for Democrat and eventual winner Bill Clinton by less than 2,000 votes over Bob Dole in 1996. They supported George W. Bush, who became president in the 2000 election, one of the closest from US history.

    With the single exception of 1976, when voters in the county backed President Gerald Ford over Democratic challenger and eventual winner Jimmy Carter, it worked like clockwork. Every four years, county voters chose the candidate who ended up in the Oval Office.

    Then came 2016 and Donald Trump. He was defeated by Hillary Rodham Clinton by more than 60,000 votes in the county, but went on to win nationally.

    Valea Simi like an election bell?

    The win clouded the county’s status as a viewpoint that reflected the sentiments of most of the nation. But there was one city in the county that stayed in step with national trends in both of the last two presidential elections.

    It’s Simi Valley.

    In 2016, 28,022 of the city’s electors cast their ballots for Trump, compared to 25,670 for Clinton. Although registered Republicans in the city slightly outnumber Democrats, voters again mirrored national trends in 2020, with Democrat Joe Biden winning 635 more votes than Trump on his way to the White House.

    In Tuesday’s election, considered by many to be one of the most important in the nation’s history, Ventura County voters will likely vote Democratic in the presidential race, as they have in every election since 2008, when Barack Obama won the county races and national. But in Simi and across the country, the margin looks much tighter, and the outcome is anyone’s guess.

    It’s at least possible that whether Simi voters cast their ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Trump, they’re in step with the nation’s consensus.

    “If Trump somehow pulls off a big upset, I would certainly look at Simi Valley as a harbinger or a priest,” said Herb Gooch, a retired political scientist who has followed election trends in Ventura County for nearly 40 years. “I would see Simi Valley mirroring what’s happening nationally.”

    Once a Republican stronghold, Ventura County has changed

    The county was once considered a Republican stronghold, but that changed as the population grew and younger voters moved in, Gooch said. The increase in Latino residents has brought more Democrats into the mix, and a recession that has hit defense and technology-related companies has hurt Republican numbers.

    In 2008, the county officially turned blue as Democratic registered voters outnumbered Republicans. That gap has grown. As of Wednesday, about 43 percent of voters in the county were Democrats and 29 percent were Republicans.

    Less has changed in Simi Valley, Gooch said, citing the high rate of home ownership, fewer people moving out of the community, the presence of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the influences of evangelical and other faith groups.

    State records from September show Simi is the only city in the county where registered Republican voters outnumber Democrats, though by a margin of less than 3,000 voters.

    No one knows what will happen in the 2024 election

    Nationwide, the number of early voters as well as turnout on that day will influence the outcome of the election. No one knows what will happen, Gooch said, citing factors including the reluctance of many voters to publicly proclaim who they support.

    “A lot of people won’t talk,” he said. “We don’t know how this is going to turn out.”

    Others said it was hard to tell whether the counties or cities that voted for the eventual winner were influencing a trend or just following it. In some cases, the margin of victory is so small that it’s hard to tell what it means.

    “It could very well be a coincidence,” said Tim Allison, an assistant professor of political science at CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo, who also served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

    The county electoral website includes election results for over 50 years. Timm Herdt, former state bureau chief at The Star, tracked the results back more than a decade to 1920 when county voters favored Warren Harding and began their streak of endorsing national winners.

    At the height of their reign, Ventura County voters sometimes crossed party lines. They supported Bill Clinton in two elections when the majority of registered voters were Republican.

    Such a move seems less likely now because of the growing divide between the parties and the decline in the number of voters who are truly independent, Allison said.

    Like Gooch, he said it’s impossible to know what will happen on Tuesday.

    “I don’t think anyone has a clue, including the pollsters,” he said.

    Tom Kisken covers health care and other news for the Ventura County Star. Get to him at [email protected].

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