Canyon Lake is a largely Republican city. Since its date of incorporation, all eight Republican gubernatorial, all eight presidential candidates, and all nine senate candidates who qualified for the general election ballot carried the city by a margin of at least 23 points, with Donald Trump in 2016, and 2020 as well as George W. Bush in 2000, and 2004 each carrying the city by a margin of over 50 points. Canyon Lake is also one of the few cities in California where Donald Trump received a greater percentage of the vote in 2016 than Mitt Romney did in 2012, as well as one of the few where he was re-elected with a larger percentage of the vote in 2020.