CA Governor · 2026
Democrats are heavily favored to win this governorship
99% probability
Candidates
Last verified 2026-09-14.
Xavier Becerra is an American attorney and politician who served as the 25th United States secretary of health and human services under President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025.
Stephen Glenn Charles Hilton is a British-born American conservative political commentator, former political adviser, and contributor for the Fox News Channel.
Open seat -- the current officeholder is a Democrat, who is not running.
Not applicable to this race: Candidate fundraising split, Candidate fundraising data available · Built on annual structural data, current release 2026-05-29: State mood: Domestic Stability, State mood: Isolation. See /status for current data freshness.
Why we think this
- This state's baseline partisan lean favors Democrats by about 70 points of margin before anything else is considered.
- This is an open seat: the current officeholder (a Democrat) is not on the ballot, which tends to make the race more competitive than a defended seat.
- Separately, current public mood in this state specifically is shifting strongly toward Democrats, on top of the structural baseline.
- Independently, the national midterm environment is shifting every race this cycle modestly toward Democrats -- a separate, nationwide force layered on top of the state-specific factors above, not a restatement of them.
Model details -- coefficients, calibration, and the full technical decomposition.
Model sengov-2026-govmoney-v1 · computed 2026-09-16