Becerra wins by a mile: 4 lessons from a race that wasn’t ever close

In an election season full of upsets, plot twists and party in-fighting, the California governor’s race served up a result that nearly everyone saw coming: The Democrat, Xavier Becerra, won big.

Becerra’s win over Republican Steve Hilton, called by the Associated Press shortly after polls closed Tuesday, means Democrats will extend their 16-year hold on the Executive Mansion to a third governor.

Becerra will be California’s first Latino governor in more than 150 years.

Outnumbered two-to-one and outspent by many magnitudes more, the election plunges California Republicans deeper into the political wilderness. The party has not won a governor’s race since voters elected Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 or a U.S. Senate race since 1988.

Here are four takeaways from the race.

Trump still dominates California politics

Credit one man with the scale of Becerra’s win: President Donald Trump.

Polls show the president, never popular in California, hit new lows on the eve of the election. A Public Policy Institute of California poll released last month found that only 21% of California adults surveyed say they approve of Trump’s job performance.

Against that backdrop, political analysts say the Trump-backed Hilton never stood a chance. While he occasionally gestured at policy differences with Trump, like restoring federal funding cuts to the UC system, the former Fox News host always tried to pivot the conversation back to California’s problems and his voluminous policy proposals.

Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican consultant, said voters weren’t willing to hear what Hilton had to say as long as he stood by Trump.

“It’s one of the oldest adages in politics: People don’t care what you know until they know that you care,” Madrid said. “And if you are a Donald Trump supporter, nobody cares.”

Turnout surged among Democratic and Latino voters

In California, like the rest of the country, voter turnout surged.

The trend appears to be especially pronounced with two groups whom pre-election polls showed overwhelmingly favored Becerra: Democrats and Latinos, according to voting data from the firm PDI. The firm uses voter files to track voter demographics.

Turnout was up at least 1.9 million votes over the same period in 2022, according to PDI’s data. While the totals will change as more ballots come in, PDI’s data as of Tuesday night showed about 39% of registered Democrats have voted, up from 29% at this point in 2022.

Among Latinos, the number is just as striking. About 26% of registered Latinos have voted, up from 16% at this point in 2022. Put another way, California Latino voters have turned in almost 800,000 more ballots than they had at this point four years ago.

Becerra’s vague policy platform didn’t hurt him

Facing a Republican in a blue state in a wave election, Becerra never felt pressure to lay out a detailed policy platform. The former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spent much of his summer fundraising, rarely appearing in public. When he did emerge in the fall, Becerra spent much of his time rallying for down-ballot Democrats or campaigning against Proposition 39, the voter ID initiative. Pressed by reporters on how he’d tackle problems ranging from high-speed rail to homelessness, Becerra often dodged or spoke in generalities.

Pomona College politics professor Sara Sadhwani said from Becerra’s perspective, there was no incentive to take policy positions that might alienate his base. Madrid said doing so would amount to “a debate with yourself” given Hilton’s irrelevance in the general election.

Sadhwani said a runoff between two Democrats would have forced a very different election because Becerra would have faced a more serious electoral threat.

“From the perspective of voters, no doubt, given the very real policy issues that California faces, voters would have benefited from a lively debate between two viable candidates,” Sadhwani said.

Hilton’s campaign aimed to do everything, all at once

Shortly after winning second place in the June primary, Hilton told a gaggle of reporters gathered in front of the Capitol that he knew he faced long odds.

“I understand that everyone assumes that this is now a foregone conclusion that Becerra is going to be the next governor,” Hilton said. “I want to be clear that that is not how it’s going to be this year. This is going to be a very different campaign to anything that anyone has seen before.”

Hilton proved to be right about running a novel campaign and wrong about whether it would move the needle.

The British-born former Fox News host ran a high-volume, high-velocity election effort. He ran ads generated by AI, ones aimed at Democrats and ones designed to spark controversy. Hilton crisscrossed the state with campaign events over the summer, while Becerra barely surfaced in public. The Republican’s 50 policy proposals included pledges to remove California’s ban on flavored ZYN nicotine pouches, fire 10% of the state workforce, create 10 new cities, abolish the DMV and slash state taxes for both the working class and millionaires.

But Hilton didn’t have the cash to hammer home his message on California’s airwaves — a crucial battleground for any statewide political candidate. GOP consultant Rob Stutzman estimated it takes at least $6 million a week for a candidate “to really be effective on TV statewide.”

“He made all those ads, and did anyone ever see him on TV?” Stutzman said. “I don’t think so.”

This story was originally published November 4, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Becerra wins by a mile: 4 lessons from a race that wasn’t ever close."