The first post-primary poll of the California governor race is here

The first poll of California’s upcoming governor face-off shows Democrat Xavier Becerra with a strong lead.

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The poll, released Thursday by the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies, found that Becerra leads Republican Steve Hilton by over 20 percentage points among registered voters.

This is the first poll released since the election was called this week. The findings are not entirely unexpected given the large number of registered Democrats in the state compared with Republicans.

Becerra, the former state attorney general and health secretary under President Joe Biden, and Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, were the top two finishers in the California governor’s primary race, which was finally called by the Associated Press on Tuesday after nearly a week of ballot counting. The poll found that Becerra is the choice of 52% of the state’s overall electorate, while 31% favor Hilton. The poll found that 17% of voters are undecided. 

“Xavier Becerra’s lead makes it increasingly likely that California will elect its first Latino governor in November,” said IGS co-director G. Cristina Mora in a news release accompanying the results. She noted that the state has had a Latino plurality for years, but that voter group’s electoral and financial power “is only recently becoming more widely recognized.”

The pollsters say that Becerra’s lead is due to a large number of registered Democrats in the state. Eighty-two percent of registered Democratic voters support Becerra in the general election. Hilton similarly has widespread support from registered Republicans, with 84%, but registered Democrats outnumber Republican voters by 20 percentage points in California, which gives Democratic candidates “a huge advantage in general elections,” Berkeley IGS Poll Director Mark DiCamillo wrote in the release.

Hilton, who was also an adviser to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, clinched the second spot this week over Democratic venture capitalist Tom Steyer, whom Hilton beat with almost 200,000 more votes. 

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President Donald Trump endorsed Hilton, which allocated a lot of the Republican vote to him and away from Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the other major Republican candidate. DiCamillo wrote that while Trump’s endorsement likely helped boost Hilton to the general election, it could work against him in the next few months leading up to November due to the low approval ratings Trump has in California.

All three candidates — Becerra, Hilton and Steyer — had led the crowded field in the months leading up to the primary. There were eight major candidates, and 60 overall gubernatorial hopefuls. While the last remaining votes are still coming in, they would not be enough to alter the final results.

The poll also found that progressive voters preferred Becerra over Steyer by a 39% to 29% margin. DiCamillo wrote that the findings meant Steyer was ultimately unable to appeal to progressive voters, whom he targeted heavily on the trail, and that’s why he struggled to overtake Becerra in the primary.

The poll was conducted online in both English and Spanish between May 19 and 24. It surveyed 8,578 registered voters in California, of which 5,472 were considered likely voters in the June primary election. Despite the poll being conducted before the June 2 primary, Berkeley IGS specifically asked respondents about a head-to-head matchup between Becerra and Hilton, which informed the results. The Los Angeles Times partially funded the poll, which has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.