Santa Clara County is a large and heavily populated county in the state of California. It has an estimated population of 1.9 million people and encompasses cities such as San Jose, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and Mountain View. The county's politics are largely governed by the Democratic Party, which holds the majority of local political seats in the county. There are numerous local political candidates running for office in Santa Clara County, including those vying for positions on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, the San Jose City Council, and other positions within the area. These candidates can range from longtime incumbents to new challengers looking to disrupt traditional politics in the area. The local elections in Santa Clara County are typically quite competitive and often highlight important issues that affect residents such as homelessness, transportation infrastructure, housing affordability, education funding, environmental conservation, public safety measures, and more.
The political climate in Santa Clara County, CA is very liberal.
In Santa Clara County, CA 72.6% of the people voted Democrat in the last presidential election, 25.2% voted for the Republican Party, and the remaining 2.1% voted Independent.
In the last Presidential election, Santa Clara county remained overwhelmingly Democratic, 72.6% to 25.2%.
Santa Clara county voted Democratic in every Presidential election since 2000.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index
Santa Clara County, CA is very liberal.
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Metro Area is very liberal.
California is strongly liberal.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index is based on recent voting in national elections, federal campaign contributions by local residents, and consumer personality profiles.
VoteWord™
Displaying 20 years of Presidential voting, visualized in one word.
Santa Clara, California: D D D D D D
How It Works:
Here at BestPlaces, we were looking at the voting patterns since the 2000 election and realized that we could express the results of each election as one letter. R if the Republican Party candidate won, D for the Democrat and I for the Independent. The six elections (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020) would be expressed as six-letter word (R R D R R).
Then we went a little further and added the dimension of magnitude. If the difference of victory was greater than 10 percent, the letter is upper case, and lower case if the difference was less than 10 percent. This allows us to see interesting voting patterns at just a glance.
Here's the VoteWord for Iowa d r d d r. In the last six elections the state has been closely contested, voting narrowly for the Republican Party candidate in 2016 and 2020 after voting for the Democratic Party in 2008 and 2012. Virginia (r r d d d D) has voted for the Democratic Party in the last three elections.
Individual Campaign Contributions in Santa Clara County, CA
In the last 4 years (2018-2021), there were 284,144 contributions totaling $89,443,251 to the Democratic Party and liberal campaigns, averaging $315 per contribution.
In the last 4 years, there were 25,369 contributions totaling $15,775,396 to the Republican Party and conservative campaigns, averaging $622 per contribution.
(source: Federal Election Commission)