A new Emerson College poll released Saturday shows California Republicans risk being completely shut out of the November general election, a sharp reversal from their frontrunner status earlier this year.
Under California’s “top-two” primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes on Tuesday will advance to the general election, regardless of their political party. According to the new data, Democrats now hold the top two spots. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra leads the field with 28% support, followed closely by billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer at 22%.
Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host who carries an endorsement from Donald Trump, sits in third place with 21% support. Because Hilton is within striking distance of Steyer, the final days of campaigning are critical for the GOP. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the other major Republican in the race, has fallen to a distant fifth place at 12%.
The rest of the field remains in the single digits. Former Democratic Representative Katie Porter and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan each hold 5% support, while former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sits at 2%. Another 5% of surveyed voters remain undecided.
The current standings are a mirror image of late 2025 and early 2026, when multiple polls showed Hilton and Bianco tied at the top of the pack. That early data sparked hope among Republicans that a fractured Democratic field might allow two GOP candidates to lock Democrats out of the general election entirely.
“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, a spokesman for Steve Hilton, said 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. 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.”
Spokespersons for the Becerra and Steyer campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
While the Republicans are trailing, the poll highlights a distinct advantage in voter loyalty. Among respondents backing Hilton and Bianco, 88% stated they would “definitely support him” and would not change their minds before Tuesday. By contrast, voter certainty is lower among the leading Democrats, with 76% of Becerra voters and 74% of Steyer voters locked into their choices. Porter faces the softest support; less than half of her voters, 48%, say their minds are completely made up, while 52% admit they could change their votes.
Porter’s decline follows public reports suggesting she had abused both her congressional staff and her husband.
The race looked entirely different during Emerson’s 2025 survey, when both Becerra and Steyer polled at just 4% support. At that time, Bianco led the pack at 13%, followed by Hilton and then-Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell tied at 12%, and Porter at 11%.
The trajectory of the race shifted drastically over the next few months. Trump issued his endorsement of Hilton, and Swalwell faced multiple allegations of sexual assault and rape. Under heavy party pressure, Swalwell exited the race on April 12 and resigned from Congress the next day. His departure opened a vacuum that allowed Becerra and Steyer to quickly consolidate Democratic support.
Following Swalwell’s exit and early polling that threatened a Democratic lockout, California Democrats shifted their strategy. Rather than uniting behind a single consensus candidate, the party focused heavily on driving up overall Democratic voter turnout for the June primary.
Term-limited California Governor Gavin Newsom commented on the shifting strategy in early May, stating, “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 said, regarding the possibility of an all-Republican general election. Newsom has not yet endorsed a successor and noted he has no current plans to do so.
The possibility of a single-party general election is an outcome Hilton himself predicted late last year, despite the optimistic polling for Republicans at the time. In a December 2025 interview, Hilton stated that the chances of two Republicans advancing were “actually happening are zero.”
“There’s no way that the scenario that some people are talking about will come to pass,” Hilton said in December. “There will be one Republican in the general election, and I’m very confident that that will be me.”
The Emerson College poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters from May 27–28. It carries a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points and utilizes data weighted by party registration, geographic region, and demographic factors.
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