2016 United States presidential election in California
election in California
The 2016 United States presidential election in California was held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. California voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, businessman Donald Trump, and running mate Indiana Governor Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her running mate Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. California had 55 electoral votes in the Electoral College, the most of any state.
Clinton won the state with 61.73 percent of the vote, a 30.11 percent margin, and a vote difference of 4,269,978. Despite being the largest state by population in the country, California only delivered Trump his third largest vote count, behind Florida and Texas. Even though Clinton lost the presidency, her victory margin in California was the largest of any Democrat since 1936. This was only the fourth time in U.S. history that a Republican was elected president without carrying California. She also was the first Democrat to win Orange County since that same year, making Trump the first ever Republican to win the presidency without winning the county. Trump's 31.62% vote share remains the worst performance by a Republican presidential nominee since 1856. The state was one of 11 (along with the District of Columbia) that shifted towards Clinton and Kaine from the 2012 campaign of Obama and Biden.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “2016 United States presidential election in California” as election in California. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as election in California. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23016583. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016, 1936, 1856 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “2016 United States presidential election in California” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.