Since 1950, California has more often chosen a Republican over a Democrat in presidential elections.

Election pundits and pollsters biting their nails over battleground states aren’t thinking much about California right now. The liberal stronghold — and state with the biggest chunk of electoral votes on offer across America — is the fourth-bluest state in the nation, per 270toWin.

California will almost certainly pick Kamala Harris for president in 2024, as it did Joe Biden in 2020. But a Democratic sure thing in the state wasn’t always the case; in fact, in the past 74 years, California has chosen a Republican for president as many times as it has a Democrat. It wasn’t until a saxophone-playing young governor from Arkansas ran for president in the 1990s that the Golden State turned reliably blue.

Here’s a look back at who won, sometimes surprisingly, California’s many Electoral College votes over the years, starting with the first election in which all 50 states participated.

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The first televised debate didn’t do a sweaty Richard Nixon any favors. Despite his experience as vice president to Dwight D. Eisenhower, being up against the fresh-faced junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, proved too much for pre-tricky Dick.

Nixon was still suffering from the flu and had spent a grueling day on the campaign trail, while Kennedy had been holed up in a hotel practicing his lines. While most radio listeners called the first debate a draw or even pronounced Nixon the victor, polls showed Kennedy won over the 70 million television viewers by a broad margin.

1960: Presidential candidates Richard Nixon, left, later the 37th president of the United States, and John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, during the televised debate.

Kennedy won one of the closest elections in U.S. history that year, but he didn’t get any help from California. The state voted for the SoCal-born Republican, giving Nixon a marginal win of less than 1 percentage point in California.

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Interestingly, in a reversal of the “red mirage” of 2020, Kennedy appeared to have carried California by 37,000 votes when all of the voting precincts reported, but after absentee ballots were counted a week later, Nixon came from behind to win California by 36,000 votes.

California voted for Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, along with most of the country. The former vice president rode the wave of Kennedy’s popularity after his assassination in Dallas in 1963. Johnson carried a whopping 44 states to Republican Barry Goldwater’s six and earned 61.1% of the popular vote, the highest count since 1820. This Democratic win in California would be an anomaly, however, and it would be a while before California would vote blue again.

Eight years after his loss to Kennedy, Nixon’s comeback in 1968 was a winning one. After a chaotic year of race riots and Vietnam War protests, Nixon ran........

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