Tight California governor’s race between five leading candidates

With just over three months to go before California’s primary election, the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom remains as murky as L.A.’s foggy June gloom.

A newly released poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that the five candidates topping the crowded field hover within 4 percentage points of one another. Among the five, former Rep. Katie Porter, Rep. Eric Swalwell and hedge fund founder Tom Steyer lead the way among the Democrats, and conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco were the top Republicans.

“The race is unsettled,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s survey director, adding the voters’ deep concerns about affordability will be a driving factor in the race. Nearly two-thirds of likely voters, and 78% of young voters, said these factors would be critical in determining which candidate they support. “That issue is one that we can’t say enough about this year.”

In a crowded field of a dozen prominent candidates, Hilton had the support of 14% of likely voters, Porter 13%, Bianco 12%, Swalwell 11% and Steyer 10%, according to the poll. No other candidate received the support of more than 5% of respondents. One in 10 likely voters were undecided.

California

Your guide to the race for California governor: Who will replace Newsom?

The wide-open race to succeed Gavin Newsom as California governor has attracted a large and diverse field of candidates.

May 14, 2026

The two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary will move on to the general election regardless of party identification. With nine prominent Democrats in the field, this has led to concerns among party leaders that the Democratic candidates may splinter the vote and the two Republicans could advance to the November ballot. No Republican has been elected to statewide office in California since 2006.

California’s top-two primary system went into effect in 2011. Since then, Republicans have rarely registered among the top two candidates in polling in gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races. Businessman John Cox led Newsom in one poll in the 2018 primary; former Los Angeles Dodger Steve Garvey led then-Rep. Adam Schiff in three primary polls in 2024.

But, reflecting how large the Democratic field is and how fractured the party’s voters are in the 2026 governor’s race, Republicans have placed first or second in nearly every poll, and in multiple polls Hilton and Bianco took both spots.

While support for Hilton and Bianco held steady since PPIC’s December poll, backing for Porter and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra significantly declined as more Democrats entered the contest and Porter dealt with the fallout from videos of her cursing at an aide and scolding a reporter. Porter expressed remorse for her behavior.

Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego, said none of the candidates are household names. Porter and Swalwell’s support is boosted by their online and cable television news appearances, while Steyer’s is driven by the tens of millions of dollars he is spending on TV ads, he said.

“The uncompetitiveness of California politics has ... left people with very little political memory of even folks who held statewide political office,” he said. “Voters are looking at who they have on their phone, in TV ads and on MS Now.”

He added the three top Democrats all came from the liberal wing of the party.

“That shows where the Democratic Party is right now, where the energy is,” Kousser said. “The state is longing for someone to counterbalance Donald Trump rather than govern from the middle.”

Steyer, a billionaire hedge-fund founder, has donated $47.4 million of his own wealth to his campaign.

A wild card is San José Mayor Matt Mahan, who entered the contest in late January. He is not well-known statewide and received the support of 3% of likely voters in the poll. However, he has the backing of many wealthy Californians, notably in Silicon Valley. He has raised $7.3 million since entering the race, and a separate independent expenditure committee supporting his bid kicked off a $4.8-million statewide television ad buy to introduce Mahan to voters.

Mahan spent Thursday afternoon touring Pacific Palisades, where homeowners are struggling to rebuild following the deadly wildfire in January 2025.

Mahan expressed concern that there was no single individual in charge of the rebuilding effort. He also suggested he would have a better relationship with President Trump than Newsom has and would use that alliance to help Palisades’ residents get money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“I don’t care who gets the credit, let’s fix the problem,” Mahan said.

Still, the mayor has a long way to become recognizable in voter-rich Southern California. Los Angeles County alone is home to one out of every four registered voters in the state.

Several other races will appear on the November ballot, notably congressional contests that could determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives. The state’s 52 congressional districts were redrawn in a rare mid-decade redistricting after voters approved Proposition 50 last year in an effort to counter President Trump’s calls on Republican leaders in Texas and other GOP-led states to reshape their congressional lines.

Likely voters in California overwhelmingly prefer a Democratic congressional candidate over a Republican, 62% to 36%, according to the poll. A proposed 5% tax on the assets of billionaires that largely would be used to fund healthcare services in the state also was supported by 6 in 10 likely voters.

The PPIC poll surveyed 1,657 California adults online in English and Spanish from Feb. 3 to 11. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.

Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.