Becerra, former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary under President Joe Biden, leads the poll with 23% support among likely voters, followed by Hilton, a former Fox News commentator and businessman, at 20%.
Steyer, a billionaire former hedge fund manager turned progressive activist, garnered 15% support, while Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, a Democrat, rounded out the top five at 13% and 12% respectively.
“This is the first poll that we’ve done that showed with some clarity that we have two candidates with more than 20% of the vote — one a Democrat, one a Republican,” PPIC survey director Mark Baldassare said. “There’s always the possibility that we end up with two Democrats [in the November runoff], but it’s much more likely at this point that we have a Democrat and a Republican.”
Democrats have largely rallied around Becerra, who was stuck in the single digits in the PPIC poll as recently as early April, after East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race amid allegations of sexual assault and harassment against him.
“Swalwell’s exit and the circumstances surrounding it led to support for Becerra — who has experience in Sacramento, unlike really any other of the major candidates, and spoke to Democrats about something that really mattered to them, which was that he had experience taking on Donald Trump,” Baldassare said.
Hilton likewise surged further ahead of Bianco among Republican voters after President Donald Trump endorsed him in early April. That’s despite the latest PPIC poll also finding a sharp drop in the number of Republicans saying the U.S. is going in the right direction — down to 50%, from 64% in PPIC’s February survey.
Despite that shift, Baldassare said, Trump looms large among Republicans, earning a 75% approval rating from GOP voters in California.
“Endorsements by President Trump, we’ve seen again and again, in primaries makes a big difference,” he said.
The poll indicates that Steyer, who has far surpassed California’s self-funding record by spending more than $213 million of his own fortune on his candidacy, seems to have hit a ceiling in the mid-teens, Baldassare said. He didn’t count Steyer completely out, though — and Steyer’s significant war chest means he’ll have no problem funding wall-to-wall ads in the campaign’s final days.
“We haven’t seen much change in support for Tom Steyer since he entered the race,” Baldassare said. “But Tom Steyer is still a contender, and we’ll watch and see what happens.”
The poll also found that the cost of living and affordability remain Californians’ top concerns within the state, and nearly one-third of respondents see political extremism or threats to democracy as the most important problems facing the U.S. An additional quarter of Californians told PPIC the economy was their top concern nationally.
The poll has a sampling error of plus or minus 3.2%. It was conducted May 14-18.
