One of these guys is likely the next governor of California.
Photo: Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Getty Images

The 2026 California governor’s race started off quiet and rather boring with a big field of too many lackluster Democrats and a couple of lackluster Republicans competing in the state’s nonpartisan top-two primary system. It began to heat up as Democrats grew to fear a Republican “lockout” in which GOP candidates Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco might finish first and second, denying California’s majority party any chance at the governorship. Then last month, the contest was totally upended. First Donald Trump endorsed Hilton, dampening GOP lockout hopes. Then Democratic front-runner Eric Swalwell’s campaign imploded over sexual-misconduct allegations, leading him to quit the race and then resign from Congress. The race was in flux just as mail ballots went out to every registered voter in the state at the beginning of May.

With Swalwell out, former state attorney general and HHS secretary Xavier Becerra saw a big surge in support. Meanwhile, a candidate distinctly to his left, billionaire Tom Steyer, doubled down on an incredibly lavish self-funded ad blitz. With everybody pounding Becerra in ads and debates, it’s been unclear for the past few weeks how the field would shake out.

Now it looks like the race might finally be settling down. The latest Evitarus tracking poll commissioned by the California Democratic Party, which was taken from May 14 to 16, has Hilton and Becerra tied for the lead, each with 22 percent of the vote. Below them we have Steyer at 15 percent, Bianco at 11 percent, Katie Porter at 6 percent, Matt Mahan at 4 percent, and other candidates with negligible support. The trend lines (since this is a tracking poll) since March show Bianco and Porter headed downward and Mahan (who has been advertising heavily) headed nowhere. Hilton and Steyer are gaining modestly, while Becerra has gone from the back to the front of the pack. It also shows about half of Republicans have already filled out their ballots — and, significantly, one-third of Democrats have done the same, confirming anecdotal evidence that many Democrats are holding on to their ballots to see how the contest develops (the deadline for post-marking them is June 2).

Between Hilton’s big lead over Bianco and the relatively high number of Republicans voting early, the odds of Bianco finishing in the top two and producing a GOP lockout are definitely fading. That suggests we’re in a three-way race for the two general-election spots with Hilton, Becerra, and Steyer still in the running. The most likely scenario remains a general election between Hilton and one of the two Democrats, which would very likely result in another Democratic governorship. But a Democratic lockout remains possible, if only because Steyer still has unlimited funds and you could see some of Porter’s progressive support drifting his way down the stretch. We’re also far enough into the race that the odds of some late-breaking scandal of the sort that hit Swalwell like a thunderbolt are low.

So the next governor of California is very likely going to be Xavier Becerra or Tom Steyer. They both have strengths and weaknesses, which will matter most if they wind up matched against each other in November. If one of them is facing Steve Hilton, though, the weaknesses probably won’t matter nearly as much as Hilton’s party affiliation and his connection to a very unpopular president in a very pro-Democratic election year.


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