2000 United States presidential election in California

• 2000 California Democratic presidential primary
• 2000 California Republican presidential primary

Vice President Al Gore easily defeated Texas Governor George W. Bush in California. Bush campaigned several times in California, but it didn't seem to help as Gore defeated Bush by 11.8%. Bush did make substantial headway in the Gold Country, Shasta Cascade, and parts of the Central Valley, flipping San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced Counties (all of which had voted for Bill Clinton twice) and winning the highest vote share of any presidential nominee in decades (exceeding California natives Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan) in Shasta, Madera, Tehama, Siskiyou, Lassen, Plumas, Modoc, and Sierra Counties. He also flipped San Bernardino County, his largest county flip in the state (and nationally), as well as Ventura County; but he underperformed in all the large, then-historically Republican counties of Southern California and the Central Coast (San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo) relative to Bob Dole's performance in 1996, losing Santa Barbara outright despite that Dole had lost it by only 4.5%.[2] In the then-Republican bastion of Orange County, Al Gore became the first Democrat to crack 40% since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide.

Furthermore, Gore overwhelmingly won Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the state and the country, and swept the Bay Area (where Bush's father had won Napa County in 1988, the last time a Republican had won the state). In San Francisco, although Bush did improve slightly on Dole's vote share, he posted the second-worst showing of any major-party nominee (after Dole) since John Davis in 1924. Even though Green Party nominee Ralph Nader broke into double digits in the North Coast counties of Mendocino and Humboldt, as well as in Santa Cruz County, these factors helped Gore win statewide by a little over 1.3 million votes, greater than his national popular vote margin over Bush (although less than the raw vote margin whereby he won New York).

Apart from Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative former adviser to Presidents Nixon and Reagan and two-time Republican presidential candidate, was on the ballot as the nominee of the Reform Party, which had been founded by Ross Perot in 1994. However, as in most of the rest of the country, Buchanan fell well short of Perot's 1996 performance in California, cracking 1% only in Glenn County (and in tiny Alpine County, where he received eight votes). Buchanan was essentially a non-factor, and California was projected for Gore upon poll-closing, at 11 PM EST.

Technically the voters of California cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. California is allocated 54 electors because it has 52 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 54 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all 54 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.

The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 18, 2000,[6] to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.

The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All were pledged to and voted for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman:[7]

1. Sunil Aghi
2. Amy Arambula
3. Rachel Binah
4. R. Stephen Bollinger
5. Roberts Braden
6. Laura Karolina Capps
7. Anni Chung
8. Joseph A. Cislowski
9. Sheldon Cohn
10. Thor Emblem
11. Elsa Favila
12. John Freidenrich
13. Cecelia Fuentes
14. Glen Fuller
15. James Garrison
16. Sally Goehring
17. Florence Gold
18. Jill S. Hardy
19. Therese Horsting
20. Georgie Huff
21. Robert Eugene Hurd
22. Harriet A. Ingram
23. Robert Jordan
24. John Koza
25. John Laird
26. N. Mark Lam
27. Manuel M. Lopez
28. Henry Lozano
29. David Mann
30. Beverly Martin
31. R. Keith McDonald
32. Carol D. Norberg
33. Ron Oberndorfer
34. Gerard Orozco
35. Trudy Owens
36. Gregory S. Pettis
37. Flo Rene Pickett
38. Theodore H. Plant
39. Art Pulaski
40. Eloise Reyes
41. Alex Arthur Reza
42. C. Craig Roberts
43. Jason Rodríguez
44. Luis D. Rojas
45. Howard L. Schock
46. Lane Sherman
47. David A. Torres
48. Larry Trullinger
49. Angelo K. Tsakopoulos
50. Richard Valle
51. Karen Waters
52. Don Wilcox
53. William K. Wong
54. Rosalind Wyman