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California has a lengthy history of conservative activism, particularly in the mid-twentieth century.

After World War II, the U.S. government pumped billions of dollars into defense spending as the Cold War heated up. Locations like Orange County benefited from this influx of federal dollars, and that affluence wrought a conservative turn. For example, Richard Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, and then became a staunch anti-communist congressman during the 1940s, helping to pave the way for Alger Hiss's conviction (an interesting story in and of itself). Ronald Reagan won the California governorship in 1966, setting himself up for the presidency in 1980.

Aside from top-level politicians, California was also a hotbed of grassroots-level activism. For example, California was a stronghold for the paranoid, conspiratorial John Birch Society. The Birchers gained control of local school boards and even helped defeat Nixon's bid for governor in 1962 by using the California Republican Assembly to convince right-wing voters that Nixon was too moderate. Numerous other ultraconservative groups flourished out of California, including Willis Stone's Liberty Amendment Committee.

Lastly, evangelical Christianity also played a role in the ascent of conservatism in mid-century California. Many southern preachers moved west during the first half of the twentieth century, bringing with them their social and political conservatism. Some of these men founded private colleges, like Pepperdine University, that provided an alternative for right-wing parents. Other men, notably Robert Schuller and Billy Graham, founded megachurches and created televangelism to bring their version of Christianity to a broader audience.

Though California is considered one of the most liberal states in the United States, it still has pockets of conservative activism. The current House Majority Leader is Republican Kevin McCarthy, representing California's 23rd District, and Darrell Issa, from California's Orange County area, is one of the more conservative members of Congress.

The reading list for this topic is immense, so I will list some of the more notable titles:

Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism

Kathryn Olmstead, Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism

For a broader overview of the Sunbelt, which includes many sections of California, see: Sean P. Cunningham, American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt: Conservative Growth in a Battleground Region

(This was just a quick write-up off the top of my head, so if anyone has any questions I will try to answer them.)

This is a very interesting question. I am going to limit myself to post WW2 politics in California.

Let's start off with the big picture view. From 1952-1988, the Republicans won every Presidential election in California except 1964 which was a landslide election in favor of the Democrats and LBJ.

However, from 1992 onwards, Democrats have won every Presidential election. So there has been a huge tectonic shift in California politics.

The first question is why California was a Republican leaning state from 1952 ownwards. The GOP's political base in the Post-War period were the booming white middle-class suburbs developing all over America. California was the epicenter of this phenomenon. These suburbs were expanding due to California's economic boom and doing relatively well, and many were fleeing the crime and perceived corruption in cities. The policies that Democrats advocated for were perceived to benefit the poor and lower classes. The Republican message of low taxes and law and order politics, in other words, were tailor-made for the suburbs.

Although an exaggeration, Robert Taft, a Republican Senator, and Majority Leader remarked "The Democratic Party will never win another national election until it solves the problem of the suburbs.”

Defense industries had started to shift many jobs to the West Coast starting in WW2 and given that the Republicans generally favored more defense spending, this was a natural Republican constituency.

The Republican Party and American Politics from Hoover to Reagan Robert Mason

Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right Lisa McGirr

The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History Edited by Meg Jacobs et al.

Before jumping into how and why California politics shifted away from Republicans, a brief note on Republican party strength in California. Although California was Republican-leaning, it certainly remained competitive in this period. In 1960, Nixon, a Republican politician from California no less, only beat Kennedy by half a percent. In 1968, 1976, and 1988, only a few points separated the Democratic candidate from the Republican one.

Although California produced two Republican Presidents who both won office statewide in this period (Nixon and Reagan), it also had produced two Democratic governors (Pat Brown and Jerry Brown, his son). California still had Berkeley and S.F., bastions of liberal politics, and also Hollywood, which leaned Democratic.

So why did California shift away from Republicans, where its no longer a competitive state nationally. Two big factors.

First, The Democrats fight to compete in the suburbs. Starting in the late 80's with the New Democrats and the Democratic Leadership Council, Democrats had started to make concerted efforts to make inroads in the suburbs. In 1992, a member of the DLC became the Democratic Party nominee for President, Bill Clinton. Emphasizing middle-class tax cuts, fiscal responsibility and capitalizing on a Republican shift towards more socially conservative policies, the Democrats started to make more inroads in the suburbs.

The Making of the New Democrats Jon F. Hale Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 110, No. 2 (Summer, 1995),

The Emerging Democratic Majority, by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira

Second, a large influx of Latinos and, secondarily Asians, into California, turned California into a firmly liberal state, two Democratic leaning constituencies. Pete Wilson, the Governor of California, first elected in 1990, took a hard-line on illegal immigration in 1994 and supported Prop 187, an intiative that would bar illegal immigrants from using any social services, and would use local police to investigate immigration status. Although Wilson would ultimately win re-election and Prop 187 passed, the embrace of this proposition by Wilson and the Republican Party was seen as alienating Latinos from the Republican Party.

A Blue Tide in the Golden State Ballot Propositions, Population Change, and Party Identification in California Joshua J. Dyck, Gregg B. Johnson, Jesse T. Wasson

So, in summary Democratic advances in the suburbs plus a large constituency of Hispanic and Asian Americans coming into California that Republicans failed to make inroads with, have made California into a Democratic bastion.

h/t to /u/jshuntington whose response included a lot of references to some of the interesting political characters in California and some excellent sources I have sitting on my bookshelf.

This broad context of this question makes it difficult to thoroughly answer, and thus addressing with a few different contexts might help understand the relationship between historical events and how it paints California as liberal. Of course, California is definitively not more liberal the the 49 other states. Sifting through Gallup polls will find that California has lain comfortably in the top 10 states with the most voters self-identified as with liberal leanings, but never has California reached the top.

The economic take is that because the Californian population mostly resides in urban and economic centers. It's no coincidence that the two states publicly viewed as the most liberal, New York and California, also dominate in the US economy. Certainly not all major cities lean liberal, but they certainly are more likely to have a higher number of self-identified liberals. The economic opportunities and challenges that have conditioned major cities also cultivate strong and vibrant communities, such as labor unions and farm laborers, to justifiably advance liberal stances on economic issues such as income inequality and labor rights.

After the gold rush, the Glided Age between 1870 and 1890 oversaw an enormous rise in giant agricultural enterprises in Southern California that attracted migrant laborers from Mexico and Southeast Asia. Their plight of low wages and repressive employment conditions became a fertile ground for the liberal movement during the Progressive Era at the turn of the century.

With immigrants from Mexico in Southern California, and immigrants from Asia in Northern California, by 1920 their children and families comprise 45% and and 64% of the population in Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. This incredible melting pot of cultures and languages heavily powered progressive politics and movement in California with overwhelming support from a broad coalition of laborers, unionists, socialists, and workers. This aggressive network was crucial in connecting leaders with additional resources and political power to push their issues onto the political and cultural spotlight.

What also pushed California towards the movement was President Teddy Roosevelt's progressive politics from 1900 to 1910 that swept the US Western states, and fervently launched Californian Senators Hiram Johnson to the governor seat of California in 1910 in a popular revolt with the famous slogan to "kick the Southern Pacific Railroad out of politics", which at that time, fighting corruption and gang became a defining platform for the liberal-minded.

The horrendous labor conditions in both the factories in San Francisco and the corporate farms in Los Angeles launched Johnson to enact a progressive agenda of railroad regulation, child labor laws, and limitations on working hours before the US Congress. His most impactful reform during office is arguably implementing popular initiatives, popular referendums, and office recall processes. These reforms forever changed California politics, from the 1911 initiative for women's right to vote to the consequential recall of Governor Gary Davis that led to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger in politics. Using this tool of direct democracy, Californian citizens have ushered an initiative boom in the 40s and the 60s to fight for economic empowerment, civil rights, immigration reform, and environmental protection.

California has served as the center economic and cultural epicenter of the West Coast, just as New York in the East. By the 1960s, California's immense diversity in ethnicities and population density became ripe for political organisation in the civil rights movement (the Red Power movement in Davis and Alcatraz, the Black Panther in Oakland, the Chicano Movement in Southern California, the Green Movement in response to harmful oil spills, and the LGBT Movement in San Francisco). The more diverse California grew, the harder California fought for fair equal treatment for everyone.

Of course, California is not entirely liberal-leaning. While San Francisco and Los Angeles remain reliantly progressive, the rest of the state contain more conservative-leaning voters, including Orange County and San Diego.

At this point, I'm a bit hesitant to use Democrats and Republicans as references because political party identification is not synonymous with political orientation. However, the context is helpful to understand the pivotal point of Democratic dominance in recent politics.

For the most of the the latter half of 20th century, Democrats held a slight majority over the Republicans in control of the State Assembly, the State Senate, and the US Congressional Delegation. However, this doesn't hold true for California for state-wide elections up to 1998.

From 1953 to 1992, California has casted its electoral votes for the Republican presidential candidates (Johnson was the only exception). In 1968, California voted for Nixon while New York voted for Humphrey, and in 1988, California for Bush while New York for Michael Dukakis. (New York almost always has voted for the liberal-leaning presidential candidate.) California as a "blue-ish purple state" was indeed a popular conception during the 70s and 80 because California voted for its native Republican Nixon and Reagan against the Democratic nominee.

The Republican control over state-wide elections was equally evident in gubernatorial campaigns. From 1943 to 1998, Republicans held the governor's mansion for 40 years, while Democrats had 16 years. From 1944 to 1992, the Republicans held the two Senate seats for 54 years, and the Democrats for 42 years.

The crucial period of the California's pivot towards the image as a liberal stronghold occurs in the 1990s. The 1992 election was California's first Democratic presidential nominee (Bill Clinton) since Johnson in 1964 and also the first time both US Senate seats are held by Democrats since the 1860s. This turning election signal a gradual trend back to the Democrats in state-wide elections.

One predominant understanding is that the growing Latino electoral importance accounts increased voters registration in the 1990s. To gravitate his electoral base, Governor Pete Wilson in his 1994 re-election campaign backed Proposition 187, an anti-illegal immigrant initiative that was credited to mobilized Latino and minority voters towards the Democrat base.

But the political context is just one bit of understanding the liberal climate of California. Cultural influences such as Hollywood or its extensive state university and collegiate system all play a role in increasing opportunities for cultural exchange that help build a inclusive and liberal society.

I recommend reading Governing California: Politics, Government, and Public Policy in the Golden State by editor Gerald C. Lubenow. There are a few studies in there that examine on immigration's effect on the state's demographics. The book the New Political Geography of California edited by Thad Kousser offers a fresh take on the last half of 20th century.

I believe I can answer this question. Most areas where there is a migration of different cultures coming together to live as a single comunity tend to be more liberal than those communities that seem to be more singular. For example big cities like New York, or LA with a high a population of different cultures and life styles tend to see a greater picture of us humans and being expose to our cultural differences opens there mind to change. A liberal society seems to be a happier society. For example cities like Toronto, London, Vancouver, New York, or countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and some parts of the USA don't bat an eye at same sex couples walking down the street. A liberal society is about moving forward and change to except all for a happier society, conservative seem to want to stay with old values and not try to progress. Humans have to progress just look at societies on this planet that don't progress, example the Middle East. By the way I live in Toronto Canada where we are extremely liberal and it is a great community of diversity and always change.

I believe I can answer this question. Most areas where there is a migration of different cultures coming together to live as a single comunity tend to be more liberal than those communities that seem to be more singular. For example big cities like New York, or LA with a high a population of different cultures and life styles tend to see a greater picture of us humans and being expose to our cultural differences opens there mind to change. A liberal society seems to be a happier society. For example cities like Toronto, London, Vancouver, New York, or countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and some parts of the USA don't bat an eye at same sex couples walking down the street. A liberal society is about moving forward and change to except all for a happier society, conservative seem to want to stay with old values and not try to progress. Humans have to progress just look at societies on this planet that don't progress, example the Middle East. By the way I live in Toronto Canada where we are extremely liberal and it is a great community of diversity and always change.

Amnesty act in 1986.

Amnesty act in 1986.