Future Democratic rule over California could be in question after a demographic analysis warned the state’s population will see sweeping shifts by 2040.
Within 15 years, the state’s elderly population, or those 65 and older, will increase by 59% as the number of children declines by 24% and the working-age population remains largely stagnant, according to a report by the Public Policy Institute of California.
“California is entering an unprecedented demographic era, with declining populations of working-age adults and rapid growth in the number of older adults,” the report reads. “This shift will result in an old-age dependency ratio of 38 older adults per 100 working-age adults, up from 24 in 2020, and the highest ever recorded.”
The report could be bad news for California’s Democratic Party, which controls the governor’s office and both branches of the state legislature.
As younger people increasingly count for a smaller slice of California’s population, the Democratic Party will also likely see its base shrink, according to data from the PPIC.
“Younger people are more likely to be Democrats than their older counterparts. Young Californians are more liberal than older Californians across a range of policy topics, especially on questions of race relations and immigration,” a March report from the research group reads. “Likely voters under 35 tend to embrace the state’s traditional blue, with over 50% registering as Democrats,” another recent PPIC analysis reports.
The news comes as California has experienced plunging birth rates over the past few decades, with the state now having one of the lowest total fertility rates, or the number of children a woman has in her lifetime, in the country. California additionally lost a net of 407,000 residents to other states between July 2021 and July 2022, with a Stanford study published in October 2023 finding that young people between the ages of 18 and 29 were among those most likely to have moved away from California in the prior five years.
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The Golden State also experienced a shift away from Democrats during the 2024 elections, as Republicans flipped three seats in the state legislature and President Donald Trump captured a larger chunk of the vote than Republicans have received in previous elections.
“This election was like a bucket of cold water to the faces of Democrats,” Riverside County pollster Carlos Rivas told the California Globe. “The state Senate was just one part of it. Going from eight seats to 10 seats doesn’t sound like a huge gain within a year, especially with 40 seats in total. But it is a start. Orange County flipped back, and now they are only a few seats away from taking away the supermajority.”
