{"id":416514,"date":"2026-07-29T13:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/416514\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T13:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:30:08","slug":"what-orange-county-voters-tell-us-about-the-state-of-the-race-for-california-governor-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/416514\/","title":{"rendered":"What Orange County voters tell us about the state of the race for California governor \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

With just a few more months until Californians can begin voting in the 2026 general election<\/a>, Orange County residents are virtually split on who they\u2019ll back in the race for governor<\/a>, new polling shows.<\/p>\n

The race between Democrat Xavier Becerra<\/a> and Republican Steve Hilton<\/a> is a genuine toss-up here, meaning Orange County is very much in play for the gubernatorial contest, according to the latest survey conducted by the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And that competitiveness only underscores not only how deeply purple the county\u2019s electorate is, but also some fundamental shifts in how younger folks, Latinos and Asian Americans are \u2014 or are not \u2014 voting, the polling found.<\/p>\n

Hilton has a slight edge among the likely Orange County voters surveyed June 9-12, the survey found: He leads Becerra only 47% to 44%, but that is within the poll\u2019s +\/- 4.2-point margin of error.<\/p>\n

Hilton, though, does have stronger support with his party.<\/p>\n

The poll found 94% of likely Republican voters surveyed said they support Hilton, while 3% picked Becerra. Flip it around, and 82% of Democrats surveyed backed their party\u2019s candidate, while 9% said they support Hilton.<\/p>\n

Among independents, 46% picked Becerra, and 38% chose Hilton.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And Becerra, the poll found, has support among groups that are less likely to vote in the fall: Asian Americans, independents, Latinos and women.<\/p>\n

Still, statewide, Becerra leads Hilton by wide margins in California, where about 45% of the state\u2019s 23 million registered voters are Democrats. (Republicans account for about 25% of registered voters in California, and another 23% are no party preference.)<\/p>\n

Becerra led Hilton by 61% to 36% in a survey of likely voters polled<\/a> from June 29 to July 2 by the Public Policy Institute of California.<\/p>\n

And that statewide survey found Becerra with stronger support within his party than Hilton \u2014 the opposite of what UCI\u2019s survey found with Orange County voters. That poll found 93% of Democrats said they\u2019d back Becerra in the fall, while 6% chose Hilton. But 90% of Republicans picked Hilton, with 9% bucking the party for Becerra. As for independents: 60% support Becerra, and 34% Hilton.<\/p>\n

So why is Hilton finding somewhat stronger footing among Republican voters in Orange County than Becerra is among Democratic ones?<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicans may have gotten to the point where if you are a Republican, you are there because you are on \u2018Team Red.\u2019 So it doesn\u2019t really matter who you put forward as a candidate; they\u2019re voting red,\u201d said Jon Gould, poll director and dean of the School of Social Ecology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other thing is: As potential candidates go, Hilton kind of presents himself like we may have seen in the past with some of the more moderately conservative Republicans. He\u2019s not as right-wing as, say, Chad Bianco,\u201d Gould said in an interview, referring to the Riverside County sheriff who lost in the gubernatorial primary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One thing Hilton could do to expand that slight advantage, Gould said, is distance himself a bit from President Donald Trump. And he may be doing a bit of that, despite earning the president\u2019s endorsement in the primary election<\/a>. Hilton has, in recent days, actively courted anti-Trump voters, during campaign rallies<\/a> and advertisements offering a \u201csimple test\u201d<\/a> to assuage those voters.<\/p>\n

But it would also behoove the candidates, Gould said, to home in on their plans to address cost of living issues \u2014 particularly housing.<\/p>\n

After all, it\u2019s housing, the UCI poll found, that really\u00a0\u201cdwarfs everything as the No. 1 issue,\u201d Gould said.<\/p>\n

And not only is it a \u201cdefining issue,\u201d as the poll called it, but the cost of housing crosses party lines and generations.<\/p>\n

In the poll, 61% of likely Orange County voters named the cost of housing as one of the top issues facing California. That was followed by homelessness at 46%, gas prices, also at 46%, and taxes and government spending at 40%.<\/p>\n

When asked to pick the single most important issue, 37% of those surveyed picked housing. The next issue was taxes and government spending, which came in at 20%. Only 9% of those surveyed picked immigration as their No. 1 issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cHousing is an issue where Republicans could probably make inroads because Democrats have had control of state government for so long, and voters believe that housing prices have not gotten better and housing opportunities have not gotten better,\u201d said Gould.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf, however, we see gas prices continue to rise, and that remains a top issue for voters, Republicans have absolutely nothing to offer on that because voters see that as being something Trump created,\u201d Gould added.<\/p>\n

The new survey also found, perhaps unsurprisingly, older voters and Gen Z voters differ the greatest when it comes to top issues, the direction the country is headed and who they\u2019ll back in gubernatorial and congressional races.<\/p>\n

But younger voters \u2014 who gave Trump a 14% approval rating, compared to 53% of boomers who said they approve of the president \u2014 are less likely to vote. The UCI survey found only 45% of Gen Z residents said they will definitely vote in the general election this fall, compared to 87% of their boomer counterparts.<\/p>\n

Another shifting dynamic in Orange County is the rise of independent voters, the poll found.<\/p>\n

Orange County voters are in a virtual three-way tie, with 34% identifying as Democrats, another 34% as independents and 32% as Republicans, the poll found.<\/p>\n

Of the nearly 2 million registered voters in Orange County, 36.4% (or nearly 695,000 people) are Democrats, according to the latest stats<\/a> from the California secretary of state, and 33.8% of the county\u2019s voters (about 644,00 people) are Republicans.<\/p>\n

That leaves 23.4% (446,500 people) of the county\u2019s voters registered as no party preference, with the rest of the electorate picking the American Independent, Green, Libertarian or Peace and Freedom parties, or \u201cother\u201d or \u201cunknown\u201d for party registration, according to the secretary of state\u2019s figures.<\/p>\n

The rise of independents in the county \u2014 this is the first time in poll history, UCI said, that independents have polled even with Democrats as Orange County\u2019s largest political bloc \u2014 is largely driven by Millennial and Gen Z voters.<\/p>\n

But among racial groups, 44% of Asian American and 39% of Latino voters identify as independent rather than either of the two major political parties, the poll found.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a change from just two years ago, when UCI\u2019s surveys found a leftward shift among Asian American voters and an opposite rightward one among Latinos.<\/p>\n

Even still, both racial groups are leaning more Democratic in head-to-head races, including the gubernatorial contest, the poll found. There, Becerra was the choice for 54% of Latino voters surveyed and 50% of Asian American voters.<\/p>\n

There are very few counties in the U.S. that are truly purple areas, Gould said, and Orange County is one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve become kind of a bellwether for what\u2019s concerning people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But whether those concerns actually drive people out to vote in the fall, well, that remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really want to see who ends up coming out to vote. It\u2019s one thing for people to tell us all these things; it\u2019s another thing to see if they actually do come out to vote, and if they do, what moved them,\u201d said Gould.<\/p>\n

County election officials will begin mailing ballots to registered voters on Oct. 5. Election Day is Nov. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With just a few more months until Californians can begin voting in the 2026 general election, Orange County…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1400,7,9,8,400,204,92191,100,611,8047,13,136,35412,6392],"class_list":["post-416514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-2026-elections","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-politics","tag-election","tag-governor-race","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orange-county-elections","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-uc-irvine","tag-voters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416514","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=416514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}