California's governor's race tightened again on Saturday, with a new poll showing Xavier Becerra still in front but Tom Steyer edging Steve Hilton for second place by a single point ahead of Tuesday's primary election. The Emerson College survey put Becerra at 28%, Steyer at 22% and Hilton at 21%.
The race matters now because California uses a top-two primary system, and the two candidates who finish with the most votes move on to the November general election regardless of party. With ballots already flowing, the order at the top could shape whether November produces a familiar partisan matchup or something far less predictable.
More than 3.3 million Californians had already returned ballots by Saturday, but millions more remained outstanding, leaving the field too fluid to declare anything settled. The latest Emerson results also marked a shift from a Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll released Friday, which showed Becerra at 25%, Hilton in second at 21% and Steyer at 19%. That gap between the two surveys leaves the second runoff spot open to interpretation just days before voters decide.
Paul Mitchell, a political data analyst, said the race had changed sharply from earlier this year as Democrats stopped splitting the vote so widely and Hilton consolidated Republican support after an endorsement from President Donald Trump. “Both of those things in tandem change the math here,” Mitchell said. He said there was now “one fewer Democrats to split up the vote on their side,” and added, “We really do see this as a three-way race.”
That is the friction at the center of the contest: the top three candidates have pulled away from the rest of the field, but the polls do not agree on whether Steyer or Hilton holds second. Mitchell said the margins were thin enough that “it’s just as likely that Steyer or Hilton make that second spot,” and he described the race for the runoff position as too close to call. Republicans had initially appeared to be turning out at higher rates than Democrats compared with the 2022 gubernatorial primary, but the latest numbers suggest Becerra, Steyer and Hilton are the only candidates with a realistic path to the top two.
Tuesday's primary will settle the question the polls cannot. For Becerra, the issue is whether he can hold first. For Steyer and Hilton, it is whether the final vote count turns one-point differences into a general-election ticket, or leaves one of them just short in a race that has been split by the smallest of margins.
