Good morning.

(Don’t already get California Today delivered to your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.)

Today, we’re starting with a dispatch from my colleague Marie Tae McDermott about California’s influence in the presidential primaries, and how it’s changed over time:

This year, California joins the group of states voting on Super Tuesday, March 3, with officials hoping that the state and its trove of 500 Democratic delegates will play a decisive role in the nominating process. However, history shows us that California’s effect on the presidential race has fluctuated over time, from Barry Goldwater’s win in 1964 to disappointment among supporters of Bernie Sanders in 2016.

To find out more about that history and why dates matter, I talked to Andrew E. Busch, director of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College.

Which presidential primaries in California were especially close?

Probably the first one that was really significant was in 1964. Barry Goldwater was running against Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination, and Goldwater was coming off a defeat in the Oregon primary. Rockefeller seemed to be leading in California but Goldwater mobilized 50,000 volunteers and wound up winning the California primary, 52 to 48 percent. It was a really close race, and it basically sealed Goldwater’s nomination.

On the Democratic side, in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was running against Eugene McCarthy. It was a very tragic primary. Kennedy defeated McCarthy by a close margin of 46 to 42 percent, but right after he gave his victory speech in Los Angeles he was assassinated.