California Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra is pulling away from Republican rival Steve Hilton in the governor’s race, according to a new poll released just days away from the November election.
The poll by the Public Policy Institute of California has Becerra, with 61% of likely voters, dominating Hilton, at 37%, by a 24-point margin. The poll was conducted Oct. 16-22 on 1,068 likely voters.
That’s a noticeable climb up from the 22-point-lead Becerra previously had in the institute’s poll back in September, when Becerra led 60% to 38%. It appears support has reached back to similar levels in PPIC’s July poll, when the Democrat had a 61% to 36% lead.
According to a voter breakdown, many Californians are now simply sticking to their own party, with around 90% of both Republicans and Democrats supporting their own candidate. Independent voters break in favor of Becerra by a 54% to 41% margin.
Other recent polls by different organizations have also told a similar story of Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary under Joe Biden, cementing his lead over Hilton, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump.
A California Post poll just last week had Becerra at a narrower lead — at 15.7 percentage points ahead — despite Californians being so fed up with the direction of the Golden State that nearly half have seriously considered leaving.
“Voters are extremely partisan, and prefer one of their own to a Republican,” pollster John McLaughlin told The California Post.
“They will vote for Becerra and hope for the best.”
Political analyst Dan Schnur, who teaches at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine, said California voters are just as frustrated as those elsewhere in the country, but don’t see Republicans as a viable alternative.
“In most places, angry voters turn to the alternative,” Schnur told The Post. “Here in California, voters simply don’t see an alternative, so they grudgingly stick with what they’ve got.”
Experts say the part of Becerra’s big lead could be explained by the fact that many voters named fighting the Trump administration’s policies as their highest concern, second only to the state’s notorious high cost of living.
The Hilton campaign has tapped deeply into cost-of-living issues during his general election campaigning — such as $3 gas and no taxes on income below $150,000 — but experts said the odds of a Republican in a deep-blue state like California are too high to overcome.
“The difficult thing is that Steve Hilton’s a Republican in California,” Tim Rosales, a Republican strategist, previously told the Los Angeles Times. Democrats “understand the cost of living, and they feel it. They just feel like they need a new Democrat to deal with it.”
