Becerra leads crowded California governor race as poll shifts are measured

Xavier Becerra has moved into the lead, but the latest polling in California’s governor’s race still shows a field too fractured for any candidate to claim command. In a late-May Emerson College Polling and Inside California Politics survey of 1,000 likely voters, Becerra stood at 28%, with Tom Steyer at 22% and Steve Hilton at 21%. Chad Bianco trailed at 12%, while Katie Porter and Matt Mahan were at about 5% each, Antonio Villaraigosa was at 2%, Tony Thurmond was at 1%, and about 5% remained undecided.

That same race has been moving in small but telling increments. Emerson had Becerra at 19% on May 13, with Hilton and Steyer tied at 17% each, and Becerra had already gained nine points since mid-April. A second late-May survey commissioned by the California Democratic Party and conducted by Evitarus told a slightly different story, putting Hilton first at 22%, Becerra at 21%, Steyer at 15%, and Bianco at 10%. Taken together, the polls point less to a front-runner than to a field in motion, with the outcome depending on which blocs consolidate in the final stretch.

The stakes are unusually high because California’s June 2 top-two primary will send only the first two finishers to November, regardless of party. Governor Gavin Newsom is term-limited, and 61 candidates are running, including 24 Democrats, 12 Republicans, one Libertarian, one Peace and Freedom candidate, and 23 candidates with no party preference. Democrats still hold the largest registration edge in the state, at 44.96% of the 23,092,098 registered voters, but Republicans are at 25.14% and independents and no-party-preference voters account for 26.75%. In a system built to reward broad coalition-building, that fragmentation has opened the door to surprises.

The weakness of the field is the central story. Becerra brings the résumé of a former U.S. health and human services secretary, California attorney general, and member of Congress, yet he has not broken away decisively. Steyer, a billionaire environmental activist who has poured a record $193 million into his own campaign, has remained competitive despite his outsider profile. Hilton, a former Fox News commentator and British-born conservative figure, has also stayed in range after Donald Trump endorsed him in April. Bianco’s path has narrowed, and the late-May polling suggests a Democratic runoff is still likely, but not assured.

For California Democrats, the race has become a test of bench strength in the post-Biden era. A party that dominates statewide registration has still not produced a single consensus successor to Newsom, and the governor’s contest now looks less like a coronation than a stress test for the party’s next generation of leaders.