As an Californian expat now living in the glorious fiefdom of Chicago, I often speak with people from all over the Midwest and South who are absolutely shocked by my insistence that California is far more Evangelical, redneck and conservative than conventional wisdom would suggest. In their mind of my Midwestern and Southern friends, California is the land of latte liberals, of high-priced vegan delis, mini-cars fueled by corn and socialism, and all the other things mocked on Stuff White People Like.
This California of the mind is true–for a shockingly tiny portion of the giant state.

One of the difficult things to appreciate about California is just how vast it is. There are clear geographical barriers between its coastal blue communities and its predominantly red inland regions. Most who live in the coastal communities tend to forget that the rest of the state exists. This phenomenon comes to the fore every election season, when liberals are shocked that the bulk of the state shows up at polling places. This convenient ignorance is puzzling–as the California popular vote map from the 2004 election shows, you could handily fit three or four smaller red states into California’s sea of red.

In 2004, 5,509,826 Californians voted for Bush, according to Wikipedia. This was only 43% of the popular vote, to Kerry’s 53%, but in comparison to the voting rolls of smaller avowedly red states, 5,509,826 votes is an enormous number. By comparison, in Indiana in 2004, 1,479,438 voted for Bush, comprising 59% of the popular vote. In Texas–California’s rival by sheer size–4,526,917 people voted for Bush, comprising 61.09% of the popular vote. Nearly as many Californians voted for Bush in 2004 as Texans and Indianans combined. I realize that this is in no ways scientific from a pollster’s perspective–plenty of issues of population density in the regions arise–but it is illustrative of one main point: there’s a lot of fucking conservatives in California.

Driving around the country earlier this year, my Californian wife and I were struck by the disconnect between popular perception of regional politics, and reality. The political reality of this nation is far more nuanced and complex than a simple Electoral College map would suggest. Most striking, however, was after four months of sitting in traffic awash in Obama and Clinton stickers in the South, passing Obama placards outside rural farmhouses in the Midwest, just how regressive and conservative California felt upon returning. We saw far more pickup trucks adorned with Confederate Flag stickers and plastic testicles in rural California than anywhere we traveled in the deep South. It’s almost as if the conservative areas of the state feel the need to overcompensate, proudly showing off their willful ignorance.

To wit: I’m Californian born-and-raised. I’m also the only consistently Democratic voter in my immediate family, which includes far more Evangelicals and born-agains than College grads.

It’s convenient for liberal coastal Californians to glibly dismiss the country between California and NYC as “flyover states”, and entirely reasonable that the rest of this enormous country responds by dismissing California as a den of far-left elite with no appreciation for the concerns of the working class. Not only are both perceptions completely off-base, but they suggest that liberal and progressive Californians need to keep their house in order before they cast blame at the rest of the nation.

Look no further than this year’s Proposition 8, which aims to rescind California’s recognition of same-sex marriage. A recent Survey USA poll shows support for the measure by a troubling wide margin, 47% for it as opposed to 42% against.

Far-right Propositions are common in the state’s elections. The Evangelical base loves them–considered direct government by some, a drag on the State’s judicial system by many, they allow big-pocketed Republican operatives an opportunity to push back against the population-dense liberal strongholds of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

For decades, Californians have called for two states, as the cultural gap between the Northern half of the state’s coast and the South is wide–denizens of Silicon Valley and Hollywood consider themselves to be in cultural opposition to one another. The gaudy excess of Hollywood versus the faux-ascetic Prius-driving of the Bay Area is a persistent contrast, but it’s a niggling difference between two areas that have fundamentally similar political beliefs. It’s also a major distraction from the real cultural and political divide in the state.

This is a mistake. The glib NorCal latte liberals, the undergrad anarchists who consider voting to be an endorsement of the evils of global Capitalism, and the wealthy Hollywood kingmakers should be well advised of the Conservative and Evangelical giant lurking in their own midst. As should the rest of the country, which incorrectly–and dangerously–considers California to be eternally blue.