A new poll suggests Republicans’ longshot hopes of taking the California governor’s mansion could end with a shutout in Tuesday’s primary.
Three candidates stand head and shoulders above the rest of the crowded field: Democratic former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra polls in first place at 28% support, Democratic billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer polls in second place at 22% support, and Trump-backed Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton is in third at 21% support, according to an Emerson College survey released Saturday. Since the top two vote-getters Tuesday will advance to the general election regardless of party, Republicans would be locked out of November’s ballot if these numbers hold.
The survey found the race’s other major Republican candidate, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, came in a distant fifth place with 12% of support. All other candidates polled in single digits: scandal-plagued former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter and Democratic San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan each polled at 5% support and former Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa polled at 2%. Five percent of respondents were otherwise undecided.
The recent polling is the mirror image of late 2025 and early 2026, during which multiple polls — including one from Emerson College — showed Hilton and Bianco as the two leading candidates, essentially tied for the lead. This bolstered Republicans’ ambitious hopes that deep-blue California would, due its unusual primary system and a fractured Democratic field, send two GOP candidates to the general election.
“This poll should be a wake-up call for every Republican in California. An all-Democrat top two is no longer just a possibility. It’s a real threat,” Hector Barajas, spokesman for Steve Hilton, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement.
“The numbers show that Steve Hilton is the only Republican with a realistic path to the general election. If Republicans want Californians to have a real choice in November and a chance to end 16 years of one-party rule, we need to unite now,” Bajaras added. “This race is bigger than any one candidate. It’s about giving working people a voice against the political machine that has made California unaffordable, unsafe, and unaccountable.”
When asked for comment, Steyer’s campaign referred the DCNF to its Saturday press release.
“We’ve been saying for weeks that this race has narrowed to three viable candidates competing for two spots in the general election: Trump’s hand-picked Republican candidate, a corporate Democrat backed by Chevron, Meta, Uber, and the utility companies, and Tom Steyer — the progressive changemaker focused on bringing down costs and taking on the status quo,” Steyer campaign manager Heather Hargreaves said via the release.
“There is no threat of a Republican lockout, so Democrats must vote with their values,” Hargreaves added. “This race is becoming a choice between corporations protecting their bottom line and Californians trying to afford to live here.”
A spokesperson for Becerra’s campaign did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
The May Emerson College poll also found that out of all the candidates, the two Republicans had the most loyal supporters. For respondents who said they would back Hilton and Bianco, 88% for both said they would “definitely support him” and not change their minds come Tuesday.
By comparison, 76% percent of Becerra voters and 74% of Steyer voters said the same. Among respondents who said they were voting for Porter, less than half, 48%, said they will definitely continue to support her and a majority, 52%, said they could change their minds, according to the survey.
Porter, a former frontrunner in the race, plummeted in support after reports surfaced suggesting she had abused her staff and her now-ex-husband.
The Golden State gubernatorial race’s landscape looked completely different at the time of Emerson College’s 2025 survey, which had both Becerra and Steyer — now the two leading candidates — at just 4% support. Bianco, at the time, led with 13% of polled support, Hilton tied for second at 12% with then-Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, and Porter polled close behind at 11%.
Four months after this poll’s release, Trump endorsed Hilton while multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual assault and rape against Swalwell. Following extensive pressure from his party, Swalwell dropped out of the gubernatorial race April 12 and resigned his seat in Congress the following day. The disgraced lawmaker’s exit paved the way for Becerra and Steyer to go from longshot candidates to frontrunners in a short period of time.
After Swalwell’s sudden exit and multiple polls showing an all-GOP general election was possible, California Democrats pivoted in strategy from rallying around one frontrunner to instead focusing on turning out their party’s support in the June primary, CNN reported May 8.
Term-limited Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom told the outlet at the time that “People are not passive in terms of watching it happen.”
“There have obviously been many conversations about this for many months, and people have been watching closely with daily tracking polls, and there’s sort of an organized construct around seeing where things go, and to the extent necessary, taking certain actions to encourage that that’s not the outcome,” Newsom added, referring to the prospect of Democrat candidates getting locked out of the November election.
The outgoing governor has yet to endorse a candidate to succeed him and told CNN in May he had no immediate plans to.
Hilton told the DCNF in a December 2025 interview that, although polling at the time showed him and Bianco at the top of the pack, the chances of the Republicans’ dream election scenario in California “actually happening are zero.”
“There’s no way that the scenario that some people are talking about will come to pass,” Hilton said at the time. “There will be one Republican in the general election, and I’m very confident that that will be me.”
Emerson College surveyed 1,000 voters likely to cast ballots in California’s all-party primary from May 27–28. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points and used data sets weighted by party registration, region, and other demographic factors.
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