President Donald J. Trump won 67% of Shasta County’s 2024 presidential vote, marking a political shift in a rural California county that still depends on federal grants and social programs.
California Secretary of State certified results list Trump with 59,539 votes and former Vice President Kamala D. Harris with 27,130. The Guardian reported that Shasta gave President Franklin Delano Roosevelt more than 72% of its ballots in 1932.
Federal projects helped build earlier political loyalties. The Guardian reported that the Roosevelt administration financed Shasta Dam and established Civilian Conservation Corps work camps in the county. Dam construction had a workforce approaching 5,000 at its busiest point. Richard Walker, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Guardian that residents saw such projects as evidence Washington would invest in local communities.
Timber and logging later supported regional jobs and unions, but mill closures weakened that base, The Guardian reported. Walker also pointed to new technology and competition from Canadian and Southern producers as pressures on the industry. The Guardian connected the broader political shift to mill closures, conservative newcomers and church growth. Timber companies blamed environmental rules, including protections for the northern spotted owl, for industry losses. Distrust of Sacramento grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, when some residents viewed state restrictions as overlooking rural communities.
Shasta had voted mostly Democratic for decades before supporting President Ronald Reagan in 1980, The Guardian reported. Trump won more than 64% of the county vote in 2016 and 65% in 2020, the outlet said. The Associated Press reported that a 2024 recall effort against Shasta County Supervisor Kevin Crye failed by 50 votes. Crye and two other supervisors had voted to remove the county’s ballot-counting machines and direct hand counts.
The county’s reliance on federal grants and social programs makes budget decisions consequential locally, The Guardian reported. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the 2025 law will reduce Medicaid outlays by $1.2 trillion from 2026 through 2035. CBO also says household resources will decline for people toward the bottom of the income distribution. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program; The Guardian said experts have warned the fund is too small to offset the pressure.
More than 70% of Shasta voters opposed California’s new congressional map, The Guardian reported. The feature said the map is expected to give the region a Democratic representative for the first time in nearly 50 years, with Rep. Jared Huffman slated to represent it in January. Voters next face a statewide ballot measure on Nov. 3, The Guardian reported.
