Four days before California's gubernatorial primary, an Emerson College poll shows two Democrats holding the top two spots, a result that, if it holds on Tuesday, would shut every Republican out of the November general election under the state's top-two primary system.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra leads the field at 28 percent. Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer sits second at 22 percent. Trump-endorsed Republican Steve Hilton, the former Fox News host, trails at 21 percent, one point behind Steyer and within the poll's three-point margin of error, but on the wrong side of the line that matters.
The survey of 1,000 likely voters, conducted May 27, 28, amounts to the starkest warning yet for a GOP that spent months dreaming of something far more ambitious: sending two Republicans to the general election and locking Democrats out of their own stronghold.
A year ago, the landscape looked nothing like this. A 2025 Emerson College poll had Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco leading the entire field at 13 percent, with Hilton tied for second at 12 percent alongside then-Rep. Eric Swalwell. Becerra and Steyer each sat at just 4 percent. Former Rep. Katie Porter polled at 11 percent. Republicans held the top two positions, and an all-GOP general election, unthinkable in deep-blue California, appeared within reach.
Then April 2026 happened.
Multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual assault and rape against Swalwell. He dropped out of the governor's race on April 12 and resigned his congressional seat the next day. His exit removed a Democrat who had been splitting the progressive vote, and it freed up a lane that Becerra and Steyer drove straight through.
Around the same time, President Trump endorsed Hilton. That endorsement consolidated Republican support behind one candidate but also appears to have galvanized Democratic voters and party operatives to rally around their own contenders. Bianco, the other Republican, collapsed from 13 percent in 2025 to 12 percent now, a distant fifth, while the two leading Democrats surged by roughly 18 points each.
Katie Porter's implosion helped fuel the shift. Reports surfaced in October 2025 suggesting the former congresswoman had abused her staff and her now-ex-husband. Divorce documents referenced an incident involving scalding potatoes. Her support cratered from 11 percent to 5 percent, scattering voters who had to land somewhere.
They landed with Becerra and Steyer. And the numbers tell the story of a Democratic field that consolidated while the Republican side stayed split.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan polls at 5 percent. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has broken with his own party on the causes of California's crises, sits at just 2 percent. Five percent of likely voters remain undecided.
Hilton's campaign is not pretending the numbers are fine. Spokesman Hector Barajas issued a blunt statement:
"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."
Barajas went further, framing the race as an existential question for the state's Republican voters:
"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."
That last line is the argument that should resonate with every Californian tired of one-party governance, but whether it lands in four days is another matter. Bianco's 12 percent represents Republican votes that could push Hilton past Steyer if they migrated. But 88 percent of Bianco's supporters told Emerson they would "definitely" stick with their candidate and not change their minds by Tuesday. The same 88 percent firmness applies to Hilton's own backers.
In other words, neither Republican camp shows signs of budging.
The Steyer campaign's response revealed a different kind of confidence, and a different kind of calculation. Campaign manager Heather Hargreaves, in a Saturday press release, cast the race as a three-way contest and dismissed the very idea of a Republican lockout:
"There is no threat of a Republican lockout, so Democrats must vote with their values. This race is becoming a choice between corporations protecting their bottom line and Californians trying to afford to live here."
Hargreaves described Becerra as "a corporate Democrat backed by Chevron, Meta, Uber, and the utility companies", a claim worth noting as a campaign characterization, not established fact. Becerra's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The absence of major Democratic endorsements in this race has been a recurring theme. Governor Gavin Newsom, who is term-limited, told CNN in May that he had not endorsed anyone and had no immediate plans to do so. But his comments hinted at something more active happening behind the scenes.
"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."
What "organized construct"? What "certain actions"? Newsom did not specify. But the implication was clear enough: Democratic power brokers have been monitoring the race closely and stand ready to intervene if Republicans threaten to claim both general-election slots.
CNN reported on May 8 that California Democrats had already pivoted their strategy from rallying behind a single frontrunner to focusing on raw partisan turnout in the June primary. Swalwell's exit and the earlier polling showing two Republicans on top forced that shift.
The structural problem for the GOP in California is not new, but this race illustrates it with painful clarity. Under the top-two system, every vote for a second Republican is a vote that could have pushed the first Republican above a Democrat. With Hilton at 21 and Bianco at 12, the combined Republican total of 33 percent comfortably exceeds Steyer's 22. But the system doesn't reward combined totals. It rewards individual finishes.
Hilton expressed confidence in a December 2025 interview that the field would consolidate behind him:
"There's no way that the scenario that some people are talking about will come to pass. There will be one Republican in the general election, and I'm very confident that that will be me."
Five months later, that consolidation has not happened. Bianco has barely moved. And the fracturing that plagued the Democratic field earlier in the cycle, with candidates like Betty Yee dropping out and the progressive lane crowded, has largely resolved itself in the Democrats' favor.
The voter-firmness data underscores the challenge. Seventy-six percent of Becerra voters and 74 percent of Steyer voters say they are locked in. Porter's supporters are the softest, 52 percent say they could change their minds, but at 5 percent of the electorate, even a full migration to Hilton would only push him to 26 percent. That still trails Becerra.
The margin between Steyer and Hilton is one point. The margin of error is three. This race is not over, and Hilton's campaign has every reason to fight through Tuesday. But the trend lines are brutal. Both leading Democrats surged from 4 percent to the twenties in roughly a year. Hilton gained nine points over the same period, respectable, but not enough to overcome a field that splits the Republican vote while Democrats consolidate.
California's primary system has long created headaches for the minority party, and this cycle is shaping up as the most consequential test yet. If Becerra and Steyer finish first and second, California voters will choose between two Democrats in November for the first time in a gubernatorial race, and the state's Republicans will have no candidate on the ballot for the office that governs 39 million people.
Sixteen years of one-party rule in Sacramento, and the system may not even let voters weigh the alternative.
