As the state with the largest number of US representatives (52 in 2000) and electoral votes (54 in 2000), California plays a key role in national and presidential politics. In 2002 there were 15,303,469 registered voters; 44% were Democratic, 35% Republican, and 21% unaffiliated or members of other parties.
In 1851, the year after California entered the Union, the state Democratic Party was organized. But the party soon split into a pro-South faction, led by US Senator William Gwin, and a pro-North wing, headed by David Broderick. A political leader in San Francisco, Broderick became a US senator in 1857 but was killed in a duel by a Gwin stalwart two years later. This violent factionalism helped switch Democratic votes to the new Republican Party in the election of 1860, giving California's four electoral votes to Abraham Lincoln. This defeat, followed by the Civil War, demolished Senator Gwin's Democratic faction, and he fled to exile in Mexico.
The Republican party itself split into liberal and conservative wings in the early 1900s. Progressive Republicans formed the Lincoln-Roosevelt League to espouse political reforms, and succeeded in nominating and electing Hiram Johnson as governor on the Republican ticket in 1910. The following year, the legislature approved 23 constitutional amendments, including the initiative, referendum, recall, and other reform measures. Johnson won reelection on a Progressive Party line in 1915. After Johnson's election to the US Senate in 1916, Republicans (both liberal and conservative) controlled the state house uninterruptedly for 22 years, from 1917 to 1939. Democratic fortunes sank so low that in 1924 the party's presidential candidate, John W. Davis, got only 8% of the state's votes, leading humorist Will Rogers to quip, "I don't belong to any organized political party-I am a California Democrat." An important factor in the Progressive Republicans' success was the cross-filing system, in effect from 1913 to 1959, which blurred party lines by permitting candidates to appear on the primary ballots of several parties. This favored such Republican moderates as Earl Warren, who won an unprecedented three terms as governor-in 1946, he won both Republican and Democratic party primaries-before being elevated to US chief justice in 1953.
Political third parties have had remarkable success in California since the secretive anti-foreign, anti-Catholic Native American Party-called the Know-Nothings because party members were instructed to say they "knew nothing" when asked what they stood for-elected one of their leaders, J. Neely Johnson, as governor in 1855. The Workingmen's Party of California, as much anti-Chinese as it was anti-monopolist and pro-labor, managed to elect about one-third of the delegates to the 1878 constitutional convention. The most impressive third-party triumph came in 1912, when the Progressive Party's presidential candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, and vice-presidential nominee, Governor Hiram Johnson, defeated both the Republican and Democratic candidates among state voters. The Socialist Party also attracted support in the early 20th century. In 1910, more than 12% of the vote went to the Socialist candidate for governor, J. Stitt Wilson. Two years later, Socialist congressional nominees in the state won 18% of the vote, and a Socialist assemblyman was elected from Los Angeles. In 1914, two Socialist assemblymen and one state senator were elected. During the depression year of 1934, the Socialist Party leader and author Upton Sinclair won the Democratic nomination for governor on his End Poverty In California program and received nearly a million votes while losing to Republican Frank Merriam. Nonparty political movements have also won followings: several southern California congressmen were members of the ultraconservative John Birch Society during the 1960s, and in 1980 the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan won the Democratic Party nomination for a US House seat. Even when they lost decisively, third parties have won enough votes to affect the outcome of elections. In 1968, for example, George Wallace's American Independent Party received 487,270 votes, while Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon topped Democrat Hubert Humphrey by only 223,346. In 1992, Ross Perot picked up 20.6% of the vote. In 2000, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader won 4% of the vote, or 405,722 votes.
Even with a historic advantage in voter registration, however, the Democrats managed to carry California in presidential elections only three times between 1948 and 1992, and to elect only two governors—Edmund G. "Pat" Brown (in 1958 and 1962) and his son, Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr. (in 1974 and 1978)—during the same period. Three times Californians gave their electoral votes to a California Republican, Richard Nixon, though they turned down his bid for governor in 1962. They elected one former film actor, Republican George Murphy, as US senator in 1964, and another, Republican Ronald Reagan, as governor in 1966 and 1970 and as president in 1980 and 1984. Democratic nominee Bill Clinton garnered 51% of the popular vote in 1996, while Republican Bob Dole received 38% and Independent Ross Perot picked up just under 7%. In the 2000 presidential election, Democrat Al Gore carried the state with 54% of the vote to George W. Bush's 42%. In November 1998 Democrat Gray Davis, formerly lieutenant governor, was elected to be the state's 37th governor by 58% of voters. He won reelection in 2002, but by fall 2003, he was facing a recall vote on his governorship.
Both US senators in 2003 were women: Democrat Barbara Boxer, who won reelection to a second term in 1998; and Dianne Feinstein, elected in 1992 to replace Senator Pete Wilson (who was elected governor in 1990) and reelected in 1994 to serve her first full (6-year) term. She was reelected once again in 2000 with 56% of the vote. California's delegation of US Representatives to the 108th Congress (2003–04) consisted of 33 Democrats and 20 Republicans (an increase of one congressional seat over the 2000 election). Democrat Nancy Pelosi was elected House Minority Leader in 2003. After 2002 elections, the Democrats kept control of the state senate (26–14) and house (48–32).
Minority groups of all types are represented in California politics. In mid-2003, there were 31 women, 24 Latino members, and six black members in the state legislature. Two of the most prominent black elected officials include Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley, who served from 1973–90, and San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr., who began his first term in 1996 and won reelection in 1999. Organized groups of avowed homosexuals began to play an important political role in San Francisco during the 1970s.