{"id":340273,"date":"2026-05-31T14:37:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T14:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/340273\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T14:37:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T14:37:18","slug":"with-days-to-go-poll-shows-candidate-for-calif-governor-pulling-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/340273\/","title":{"rendered":"With days to go, poll shows candidate for Calif. governor pulling away"},"content":{"rendered":"

With less than a week to go before election day, the latest polling in the California governor\u2019s race shows Democrat Xaiver Becerra pulling away<\/a> with a tight race for second place between Democrat Tom Steyer and Republican Steve Hilton.<\/p>\n

The poll was conducted May 27-28 and was made up of about 50% Democrats, 27% Republicans and 23% independents, with a margin of error of +\/- 3 percentage points.\u00a0It\u2019s the first poll to show two Democrats leading the field of candidates, although with the margin of error, Steyer and Hilton are effectively tied.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s Becerra who continues to leap ahead of the pack, rising a full 9 percentage points since the previous Emerson\/Inside California Politics poll was published in mid-May. Steyer and Hilton also saw an increase in support since the previous poll, with their numbers rising 5 and 4 percentage points respectively.<\/p>\n

The rest of the top candidates, including Republican Chad Bianco, Democrat Katie Porter and Democrat Matt Mahan, have continued to lose support, with\u00a0Bianco at 12%, while Porter and Mahan are both polling at about 5%. Former LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is at 2% while Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond is at 1%.<\/p>\n

About 5% of respondents are undecided.<\/p>\n

Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said the latest poll shows Becerra is maintaining his \u201cfrontrunner status\u201d but that Steyer and Hilton have paths to getting on the November ballot.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Chad Bianco\u2019s support erodes by Election Day, Hilton is positioned to benefit. Steyer\u2019s path to the runoff depends on mobilizing younger voters while limiting further gains by Becerra, whose growing coalition could siphon support from Steyer,\u201d Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement Saturday.<\/p>\n

California\u2019s governor race has been especially dynamic in recent months, with no clear favorite for much of the year. Initially, splintered support among Democrats left Hilton and\u00a0Bianco leading the field, a major headache for Democratic Party officials, as only the top two performers qualify for the November ballot under the state\u2019s jungle primary system. The potential for a shutout in November led party officials to push<\/a>\u00a0low-performing candidates to drop out in March.<\/p>\n

The race was further scrambled in April, when\u00a0Democratic Congressman Eric\u00a0Swalwell, then a leading candidate, dropped out of the race and resigned<\/a>\u00a0from Congress after being accused of sexual assault.<\/p>\n

If Becerra remains the front-runner, it will be a remarkable turnaround for the former health and human services secretary under the Biden administration. In March, he was polling<\/a>\u00a0at just 5%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With less than a week to go before election day, the latest polling in the California governor\u2019s race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,1692,3100],"class_list":["post-340273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-sfgnews","tag-sfgpolitics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}