<\/p>\n
Tom Steyer during his election night watch party at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco on Tuesday, June 02, 2026. Steyer is a Democratic candidate for governor.<\/p>\n
Santiago Mejia\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Are you a Tom Steyer fan who\u2019s looking at his third-place position this morning and feeling down?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re here to tell you: The former hedge fund manager turned liberal activist still has a path to advance. Just maybe a very narrow one.<\/p>\n
As of 12:30 am Wednesday, former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, led the tally with nearly 27.6% of the vote. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, wa close behind him at just over 25.5% and Steyer was in third at 19.6%. Riverside County sheriff Chad Bianco had 11%; every other candidate had less than 5% each. Only the top two candidates, regardless of party, will move on to the general election in November.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The logic of a Steyer comeback is simple, if a little punishing: Only about half the state vote has been counted<\/a>. The rest will take more than a week<\/a> to tally. But if Steyer performs significantly better in what\u2019s left, that could push him past either former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra or former Fox News host Steve Hilton into the top two.<\/p>\n That assumption isn\u2019t totally far-fetched. Two major things would need to happen for Steyer to break through.<\/p>\n The remaining vote needs to be a lot more Democratic<\/p>\n For one thing, last night\u2019s results could reflect a \u201cred mirage<\/a>.\u201d The vote already tallied is likely more Republican-leaning than the final totals will be, simply because plenty of Democrats\u00a0voted late<\/a>. One analysis by the New York Times suggests late ballots are particularly Democratic<\/a>.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n That\u2019s down to a number of reasons. For one thing, some Democrats always vote late: Young people as well as less-engaged voters tend to start paying attention just before election day. But there\u2019s another dynamic at play this time: Some highly-engaged Democrats were waiting<\/a> until the last minute on purpose, hoping for the race to take shape<\/a> so that they wouldn\u2019t waste their vote.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n More of that vote needs to break for Steyer<\/p>\n Even if lots of young voters and late deciders are Democratic, that probably isn\u2019t enough to put Steyer over the edge. So far, Democratic candidates have netted about 60% of the vote counted. They\u2019d need to get more than 80% of what\u2019s left for Steyer to pass Hilton and come second just on Democratic turnout alone, assuming Steyer got a similar share of the Democratic vote to what he has received so far.<\/p>\n Instead, Steyer needs to hope that the outstanding Democrats prefer him by much larger margins. That\u2019s not so crazy: Both of the groups we mentioned above \u2014 habitually late voters and strategic last-minute voters \u2014 could swing more towards Steyer rather than Becerra, in theory.<\/p>\n Younger voters are often more progressive than older ones, and Steyer has run to the left of his top Democratic competitors. Also, late-breaking voters may have converged on Steyer simply to minimize the chance that Hilton would advance.<\/p>\n What a successful scenario might look like<\/p>\n The realistic scenario for a Steyer breakthrough requires both of the following:<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Again, 25% of the vote counted so far went to Becerra, 39% to the Republicans, 20% to Steyer and 16% for the rest.<\/p>\n If, instead, say, 22% went to Becerra, just 31% collectively to the Republicans, and 10% to other Democrats, that would put Steyer winning 35% of the remaining vote \u2014 and potentially even placing a hair ahead of either Becerra or Hilton.<\/p>\n That would require a late rally of epic proportions \u2014 but stranger things have happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Steyer during his election night watch party at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco on Tuesday, June…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,1279,204,13],"class_list":["post-344625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-data","tag-election","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344625","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=344625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}