California’s 54 Electoral College members gathered Monday in the state capitol to cast their votes for Vice President Kamala Harris, who won 58.5% of the vote in the Golden State but lost the overall national vote to Donald Trump.
Trump officially became the President-elect on Monday, as electors met in the states to cast their Electoral College votes, officially granting Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance 312 votes and Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) 226.
Though California has more Electoral College votes than any other state, it was powerless to change the outcome.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the mood was somber, with electors having to be reminded that “this is not a funeral”:
It was a starkly different scene than in 2020, when Democratic electors in Sacramento burst into cheers and applause as California solidified Democrat Joe Biden’s win, ousting Trump after his first presidential term, as the Republican refused to accept defeat and made unfounded claims of voter fraud.
This time, quiet lulls filled the Assembly chamber as all 54 of California’s electoral college votes were cast for Harris, the first California Democrat to become a presidential nominee.
“You can talk to your friends. This is not a funeral, this is a good time,” Secretary of State Shirley Weber said as she commended electors, who sat at desks usually reserved for legislators, for their “dedication to democracy” regardless of how they felt about the outcome of the election.
Harris was never particularly popular in her home state, falling to fourth place in the Democratic Party presidential primary polls in California in September 2019 before dropping out of the race altogether before the December 2019 debate in Los Angeles, her adopted home town.
However, she was embraced by California in the last months of the 2024 presidential election as the party’s standard-bearer against Trump, who managed to win 38% — up from 34% in 2020.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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