{"id":354177,"date":"2026-06-10T04:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/354177\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T04:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:27:14","slug":"does-steyer-still-have-a-chance-heres-what-would-need-to-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/354177\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Steyer still have a chance? Here\u2019s what would need to happen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Observers seem to have already decided: The governor primary is over.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s true in one sense. It\u2019s already clear that former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, will finish in the top two and move to the general election. The Associated Press declared<\/a> on Friday that Becerra will advance.<\/p>\n

The question is whether Becerra will be joined on the November ballot by former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican. But while those putting their money on betting markets<\/a> are saying yes, the AP has not yet called the No. 2 finisher.<\/p>\n

So does big-spending former hedge fund manager and progressive activist Tom Steyer still have a chance?\u00a0<\/p>\n

By 4 p.m. or so Tuesday we\u2019ll know better (and you can track results here<\/a>). But there\u2019s a reason the AP hasn\u2019t yet called the race. Everything and more would have to go right for Steyer in subsequent drops \u2014 and it could. Here\u2019s how.<\/p>\n

On election night, Hilton led Becerra narrowly, with Steyer in a fairly distant third. At that time, we projected<\/a> that Steyer would need about 35% of the outstanding vote to get into the top two, whether that meant outpacing Becerra or Hilton by significant margins.<\/p>\n

In subsequent vote drops, Becerra\u2019s share of the newly counted vote has only risen, and he has consistently remained the top vote-getter. But Steyer\u2019s share has risen faster, and in votes tallied Monday, Steyer\u2019s share of the new vote was considerably larger than Hilton\u2019s, suggesting that late deciders were not only very Democratic, but were indeed disproportionately choosing Steyer over other candidates.<\/p>\n

If that trend accelerates further, there is a narrow scenario in which Steyer edges out Hilton in the final tally. For that to happen, he would probably need a third of the 1.3 million or so votes remaining \u2014 and in that scenario, that probably means getting considerably more of the outstanding votes than Becerra.<\/p>\n

The odds of that are lengthened by the kinds of places that have yet to report votes. Some of these places, like left-leaning Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma and Yolo counties, may pad Steyer\u2019s margins. But others, like populous Fresno and Riverside counties, aren\u2019t home to big proportions of upscale progressives \u2014 the kinds of areas that have given Steyer his biggest margins so far.<\/p>\n

Steyer\u2019s winning scenario is far-fetched, but it\u2019s not totally impossible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Observers seem to have already decided: The governor primary is over. That\u2019s true in one sense. It\u2019s already…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7,1279,204,13,101,103,102,104,106,105,2013],"class_list":["post-354177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-california","tag-data","tag-election","tag-politics","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-us-and-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354177","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=354177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}