Becerra Leads Hilton by 18 Points in California Governor Race, Poll Shows
An 18-point gap with roughly three months until November signals a structurally competitive but Democrat-favoring contest in California's largest statewide race of 2026.
Democrat Xavier Becerra holds an 18-percentage-point lead over Republican Steve Hilton in California's 2026 gubernatorial race, according to a poll released August 7, 2026, by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies conducted in partnership with the Los Angeles Times. Among likely voters, Becerra received 55 percent support compared to Hilton's 37 percent, with the remainder either undecided or supporting other candidates, per the published poll results.
Becerra, a former U.S. House member who represented California's 34th congressional district for more than two decades before serving as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Biden from 2021 to 2025, entered the race with high statewide name recognition. Hilton, a media personality and former adviser to the British government, has no prior elected office record in the United States, according to his publicly available campaign biography.
The UC Berkeley IGS poll did not publish a prior California governor's race head-to-head figure for this specific pairing that would allow a direct calculation of how much the gap has narrowed over time. The Washington Examiner reported on August 7, 2026, that the margin has narrowed compared to earlier survey periods, but the specific prior poll figure and its date were not included in the publicly available excerpt reviewed by this publication.
California has not elected a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger, who won re-election in 2006, according to California Secretary of State election records. The state's voter registration data, last updated by the California Secretary of State as of February 2026, showed registered Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans by roughly a 22-percentage-point margin statewide.
Several facts remain unknown from current public records. It is unknown what the precise poll margin was in earlier UC Berkeley IGS surveys for this race, which would allow a verified calculation of how many points the gap has narrowed. It is also unknown how much each candidate has raised in the 2026 cycle. California Fair Political Practices Commission campaign finance filings would contain that information and are publicly searchable at fppc.ca.gov.