Poll: Hilton’s rise could spare Dems from disaster in California gov’s race

Republican Steve Hilton is consolidating GOP support in California’s governor’s race — and that could spare Democrats from catastrophe, according to a new poll by POLITICO and its partners.

Hilton, a Fox News commentator, leads the pack with 19 percent of likely voters in the latest UC Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research-POLITICO poll. Behind him is a pile-up of virtually tied candidates — Democrat Tom Steyer at 13 percent and, with 11 percent each, Democrats Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell and Republican Chad Bianco.

The sign that Republican voters are starting to coalesce around Hilton should make Democrats breathe easier that they can avoid their nightmare scenario of a lockout in the June. Democrats outnumber Republicans so heavily in California that they are almost certain to win the governorship as long as one of them advances from the primary. The best chance for Republicans is that Hilton and Bianco split the GOP vote relatively equally, both finishing in the top two and advancing to November.

“If Hilton starts taking votes away from Bianco within that solid Republican pool, that would make it less likely,” said Jack Citrin, a University of California Berkeley political science professor and co-director of the poll.

The findings show that Steyer, Swalwell and Porter have firmly established themselves in the top tier of Democratic contenders. The remaining Democrats are stuck in the mid-to-low single digits, with Xavier Becerra at 5 percent, Antonio Villaraigosa with 4 percent, Matt Mahan with 3 percent, Betty Yee at 2 percent and Tony Thurmond with 1 percent. Ian Calderon, who dropped out after the poll was conducted, notched 2 percent.

The rankings differed substantially from a survey of POLITICO’s audience of key political and policy influencers in the state, including political staffers, lobbyists, policy advisers and others. Swalwell leads this group with 22 percent, followed by Mahan at 14 percent, Steyer with 13 percent and Porter at 12 percent.

The survey of likely voters points to a steep climb for Mahan beyond the circle of political insiders. The late-joining contender entered the race with much fanfare from his tech industry backers but he has little name ID among voters. Nearly 30 percent of respondents said they had never heard of Mahan, and a roughly equal share said they were not sure what they thought of him.

A centrist Democrat, Mahan’s supporters have touted his crossover appeal. But just 2 percent of Republicans polled are backing his campaign. By contrast, Steyer, who is running on an unabashedly progressive platform, picked up 5 percent of GOP respondents. Overall, Steyer appears to have gotten a slight boost from his eight-figure advertising blitzkrieg, after consistently hovering in high single-digits in public polls in recent months.

Meanwhile, the two Latino candidates in the race — Becerra and Villaraigosa – are struggling to gain traction with Latino voters, with each drawing 8 percent support. That’s behind Hilton, who notches 15 percent among Latino likely voters, and Steyer with 14 percent.

For Villaraigosa and Becerra, Citrin said, “In some sense, they’re taking votes from each other.”

Seventeen percent of voters overall are undecided, but the uncertainty varies between the parties. Only 7 percent of Republicans say they are truly undecided, while 19 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of independents have not yet made their pick.

Voters give the top Democrats a mixed verdict, viewing them favorably and unfavorably in relatively equal measure (36 percent net favorable to 39 net unfavorable for Porter, 36-32 for Steyer and 32-30 for Swalwell).

Their numbers improve among Democratic voters, with Porter ranking highest with 55 percent viewing her favorably. All three are viewed more unfavorably than favorably with independents, with Swalwell earning the lowest marks with 12 percent favorable and 26 percent unfavorable.

Respondents were also asked to identify their second-choice pick; unsurprisingly, Bianco and Hilton ranked highest as the only two major Republicans in the race. Porter was the most likely second choice pick among Democrats, with 12 percent of voters viewing her as a back-up option.

The second-choice picks reveal how Democratic voters are clustering among certain candidates. Nearly 40 percent of Swalwell voters back Porter as their second choice, while 25 percent of Porter voters name Swalwell as their runner-up. Steyer performs best as the number two pick for Becerra and Villaraigosa voters, scooping up 18 percent of each candidate’s supporters.

Roughly 40 percent of all likely voters said that a “fresh perspective from outside politics” was the top trait they desired in a gubernatorial candidate — a quality that is especially enticing to Republican and independent voters. Democrats, while giving high marks to an outsider candidate, were equally interested in someone with state government experience or prior elected office on their resume.

These data come from parallel surveys of California voters and policy influencers, fielded byTrueDot, the AI-accelerated research platform, in collaboration with the Citrin Center at UC Berkeley and POLITICO. Interviews for the voter survey were conducted online in English and Spanish between Feb. 25 and Mar. 3, 2026, among a sample of 1,004 registered voters selected at random by Verasight. Voter data were weighted using the Current Population Survey and data from the California Report of Registration.

From Feb. 24 to March 3, 2026, a parallel study was conducted in partnership with POLITICO among its audience of key political and policy influencers in California. The audience was defined based on job title and organizational affiliation and included state and local government employees, political staffers, lobbyists, policy advisers, consultants, business decision-makers and subject matter experts.

The margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percent for the voter survey and plus or minus 3.7 percent for the influencers.