A race that kept political observers glued to ballot trackers for days finally has its answer.
Decision Desk HQ has projected that former Fox News host Steve Hilton will advance to California’s November gubernatorial general election, setting up a marquee showdown against former Biden administration Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
Hilton’s path to the general election was anything but smooth.
For days after California’s June primary, he found himself in a grinding battle for survival against Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer, with the outcome hinging on millions of ballots still working their way through the state’s sprawling mail-in counting process.
California’s jungle primary rules make no distinction between parties — the two candidates with the most votes advance, full stop.
That system produced a general election matchup that pits a Trump-endorsed political outsider directly against one of the most credentialed Democrats in the state.
When Decision Desk HQ issued its projection, the vote count stood at roughly 7.87 million ballots — a substantial number, but still far from complete given the volume of mail and provisional ballots concentrated in California’s largest population centers.
Becerra led the entire field at that stage with approximately 27.7 percent of the vote, representing more than 2.17 million ballots cast in his favor.
Hilton held second place at around 25.1 percent with roughly 1.975 million votes counted.
Steyer sat just behind in third at 22.4 percent, totaling approximately 1.76 million votes. Former Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and dozens of other candidates from the 60-plus person field trailed considerably further back.
California’s ballot-counting timeline extends well past Election Day. Mail ballots postmarked by June 2 and received by June 9 remain eligible for counting, as do provisional ballots. Counties face a canvassing deadline in early July, with Secretary of State certification scheduled for July 10.
Analysts at Decision Desk HQ and elsewhere had long projected Hilton as the likely second-place finisher, with probability models placing his odds at roughly 93 percent before the official call.
The basis for that confidence was geographic — the bulk of uncounted ballots sat in areas with voter profiles more aligned with Hilton’s support base.
Steyer made a late push as ballot batches rolled in, cutting into Hilton’s margin. But the closing move never produced a lead, and Hilton’s position held through the final stretch of the projection window.
Becerra’s emergence as the Democratic standard-bearer came partly through circumstance.
Eric Swalwell, the former U.S. Representative who had held the lead among Democratic candidates for much of the race, resigned from Congress after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct.
Polling reshuffled sharply in the aftermath, and Becerra absorbed much of that displaced support on his way to finishing first.
Becerra’s biography reads like a tour of California and federal Democratic politics. He spent years representing California in Congress, served as the state’s Attorney General, and capped that record with four years running the Department of Health and Human Services under President Biden.
Hilton brings an entirely different profile to the contest.
A British-born former adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron turned American television commentator, he built his gubernatorial campaign around kitchen-table issues — housing costs, electricity bills, regulatory burdens, and the general unaffordability that has pushed residents and businesses out of California for years.
The November landscape presents a steep climb for Hilton.
California’s voter registration numbers tilt heavily Democratic, with the party holding close to a two-to-one advantage over Republicans statewide. History has not been kind to Republican gubernatorial nominees in the state.
Yet polling data suggests the electorate is not entirely settled.
A 2025 survey from pollster David Wolfson found that 48 percent of California voters indicated a willingness to consider a Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2026.
Affordability, homelessness, and cost-of-living pressures drove that openness, according to the survey’s findings.
The general election now crystallizes into a direct ideological collision — Becerra, the architect and defender of Biden-era policy, versus Hilton, the insurgent candidate carrying Trump’s endorsement and a message built around California’s mounting frustrations.
