Heavily Democratic California could elect a Republican governor for the first time in two decades as a result of its primary voting system, recent polling suggests.
The Golden State has for over a decade mandated “top-two” primaries for state and congressional elections. Candidates in those races compete in the same primary, with the first- and second-place finishers, regardless of party affiliation, advancing to the general election. In California’s 2026 gubernatorial election, however, the presence of many Democrats with no clear frontrunner could possibly lead to the two well-known Republicans taking both spots on the general election ballot, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton, who both spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) about the race.
An Emerson College poll released Thursday found Bianco leading the all-party primary field with 13% of respondents’ support, while Hilton and Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell tied for second place with 12%. Former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, the scandal-plagued former frontrunner in the race, came in fourth place with 11%, followed by former Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at 5%, and billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and former Biden-era Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra each tied with 4% support.
Thirty-one percent of voters polled identified as undecided while 7% supported other candidates in the race to succeed term-limited Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Emerson College survey found.
New Emerson College Poll shows possibility of top two lockout for Democrats in 2026 California Governor race >>> https://t.co/DQigSlxUBS pic.twitter.com/dAuKVYqD6m
— Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) December 4, 2025
There being two Republican candidates with name recognition in the race amid a muddled Democratic field amounts to a “perfect storm,” Bianco told the DCNF.
“It just worked out that way,” the sheriff reflected to the outlet during an interview. “In the beginning of my campaign, when we were trying to decide if we were going to do this, we knew that there were already a dozen prominent Democrats in the race, so we knew that there was the possibility of a Democrat or two Republicans mathematically being in the top two. So, when I announced, there were no other Republican candidates, and then shortly after that, Steve [Hilton] announces.”
Hilton told the DCNF in a separate interview that, while “there is a theoretical possibility” he and Bianco will both advance to the general election, he does not think that will be the case as California Democrats “simply won’t allow that to happen.”
“In political reality, the chances of that actually happening are zero. There is no way that the Democrats will allow their field to be so fractured that they will be shut out of the general election in the biggest state in America that they feel they have a right to run,” Hilton said. “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.”
Bianco conversely argued that, “when you look at it legitimately, numbers-wise, mathematically,” an all-Republican 2026 general election matchup in deep blue California “can happen.”
“What this really shows is the Democrat Party is in shambles. They have no leadership,” he told the DCNF, referring to the apparent lack of a Democratic frontrunner. “If you look back in history, there’s always a secession plan. There’s always someone else in line. That’s how Newsom got in there.”
The current California governor served as lieutenant governor under his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, from January 2011 to January 2019.
“But the problem for them [Democrats] now is Newsom is the biggest narcissist, probably, in the world and, in his eyes, there is no one capable of filling his shoes,” Bianco added. “And it just shows that they’re [the Democrats are] struggling. They don’t have a viable leader. So right now, we still know that I’m going to still be number one, but now, the way it looks, it’s more and more possible that Steve ends up number two, and that would be great for California.”
In addition to Porter, Swalwell, Villaraigosa, Steyer, and Becerra, the Democratic candidates running for governor include former state assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, and former State Controller Betty Yee. California Attorney General Rob Bonta and billionaire businessman Rick Caruso are also reportedly considering entering the race as Democrats.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris announced July 30 she would not run for governor.
Hilton told the DCNF that, as of the time of the interview, the Democrat he thinks will advance to face him in the general election will be either Porter, Swalwell, Steyer, or Bonta — if he decides to run.
A UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies (IGS) poll conducted in late October 2025 also showed the two Republican candidates being within striking distance of making the general election — with no Democrat clearly leading the pack. The survey, conducted before Swalwell’s Nov. 20 entry into the race, also found Bianco leading with 13% support. Porter was in second place with 11%, and Becerra and Hilton both tied for third with 8% of support each. Forty-four percent of respondents polled identified as undecided.
A Republican has not won a gubernatorial election in California since former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s landslide reelection in 2006.
Hilton also observed California “has gone further and further and further to the far left” in the years since the state switched to the top-two primary.
“We’ve become, in California, the Wuhan lab of far-left extremism where they’ve been experimenting on the state with these ideological schemes that have ended in complete disaster, the worst results of any state in America: 50th out of 50 on affordability, 50th out of 50 on opportunity, highest unemployment rate, highest poverty rate, it is a complete disaster,” he added referencing findings of various studies.
“I think that the people who argued for it [the top-two primary] argued that it would promote more moderate policy outcomes as people would be trying to appeal to a broad cross section of the electorate, not to their party base. Well, how has that turned out?” Hilton continued. “So, far from delivering more moderate outcomes, it’s delivered the exact opposite, more extremism of the far-left variety, which is a catastrophe for our state and the country, because what happens in California influences the whole country.”
California voters approved Proposition 14, the ballot measure which replaced traditional party-based primaries with contests rewarding the top-two candidates in June 2010, 54% to 46%. Schwarzenegger, then the state’s term-limited incumbent governor, prominently supported and raised money for the ballot initiative, viewed as the “brainchild” of his Republican lieutenant governor, Abel Maldonado, ABC News reported at the time.
Both Bianco and Hilton expressed willingness to reform California’s unconventional primary system.
The Riverside County Sheriff called the top-two primary “disastrous.”
“That is absolutely disastrous in a true democratic republic, that’s not how government was supposed to be designed. We are supposed to have elections like everybody else has in the country; California has destroyed our election process,” Bianco told the DNCF. “I’ve already been saying that I will eliminate it [the top-two primary] the second I’m governor, and they know it’s going to happen.”
“I strongly disagree with the top-two system, and would do anything in my power and ability to to get rid of it, but we’ve got to be practical and focus on winning within the system that we have,” Hilton told the outlet. “And therefore my entire focus is on making the case for change in California with positive, practical ideas that working class Californians who’ve been hurt the hardest by these 15 years of one party rule can see will deliver them a better life.”
Hilton said that, if California voters do end up electing a Republican to succeed Newsom, it would be “a shocking rebuke and repudiation” of the state Democratic Party.
“By next year, it will be 16 years of one-party rule, which has been a complete calamitous failure and, if they [Democrats] had any sense, they would respond to that as a wake-up call that their policies are wrong, their ideas are wrong, their corruption is a disaster, and to clean up their act,” he said. “But I don’t think— they don’t seem to have any capacity for that. Look at how they’ve responded to their defeat in the general election last year, they’ve gone even further to the left on many issues.”
In addition to California, the states of Louisiana, Nebraska, and Washington also use variations of a top-two primary for non-presidential elections.
California’s current primary system led to all-Democratic general election matchups for its 2016 and 2018 Senate races, the former of which was won by Harris.
In 2022, California’s top-two primary notably helped Democrats win a Republican-leaning rural state senate seat after six GOP candidates split the vote. This allowed the two Democrats in the race to advance to the general election, which now-state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, widely seen as the more moderate of the two, won. Two years later, she switched parties and became a Republican.
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