Swalwell Leads California Governor's Race in New Poll

Eric Swalwell has taken the lead in California’s crowded gubernatorial race, according to new polling that offers Democrats their first clear reason for optimism since the field started taking shape.

The Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics survey shows the East Bay congressman at 17%, enough to pull him into first place and push Republican Steve Hilton down to 14% after Hilton had been sitting at 17% in earlier polling. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the kind of candidate who could only emerge as a serious contender in the current political climate, dropped from 13.5% to 11.4%.

For Democrats watching this race, the trend lines matter as much as the snapshot. Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, noted that Swalwell’s support among Democratic voters climbed from 23% to 27% over the past month. That’s movement in a field this size.

The bigger picture is still messy, though. Billionaire Tom Steyer has surged to 10.9%, up from 8.8% in mid-February, fueled by heavy TV ad spending. Among Democratic voters specifically, he’s now at 16%. Former Congresswoman Katie Porter, who many expected to be the frontrunner at this stage, has slipped to 8.4% from 9.8%. The math here is straightforward and uncomfortable: three competitive Democrats splitting a finite pool of votes still helps the two Republicans in the race, regardless of which direction the individual numbers trend.

State Democratic Party chair Rusty Hicks is not waiting around to see how that shakes out. On Tuesday, Hicks announced he would spend “multiple six figures” to push lower-polling candidates out of the race, and he’s backing that pressure campaign with data. The party plans to release new polling every seven to ten days between March 24 and early May, a steady drumbeat designed to make it politically untenable for single-digit candidates to stay in.

The candidates in the party’s crosshairs are not difficult to identify. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan sits at 3.2%. Former Health Secretary and Attorney General Xavier Becerra comes in at 3.0%. Former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is also at 3.2%. Former State Controller Betty Yee trails at 2.3%, and State Superintendent Tony Thurmond sits at 1%.

“I would simply say if people are afraid of information, you have to ask why,” Hicks told the Sacramento Bee.

That’s a pointed message, and the subtext is clear: stay in the race and watch your polling numbers get published every week until the embarrassment outweighs whatever strategic calculation is keeping you in.

What makes all of this harder to read is the undecided number. A quarter of the 1,000 voters surveyed last week, 24.5%, had not made up their minds, up from 21% the month before. That pool of unaligned voters is large enough to scramble this entire field several more times before California’s June primary. Swalwell leads today, but a single major development or a well-timed Steyer ad buy could redraw the map quickly.

From a structural standpoint, Democrats need someone to consolidate the center-left before Republicans with a unified base can exploit the fragmentation. California’s top-two primary system means the two highest vote-getters advance to November, regardless of party. A scenario where Hilton and Bianco finish first and second is not far-fetched if Democratic votes continue to scatter.

The Swalwell numbers represent genuine progress. He’s a credible candidate with a national profile and a Bay Area base that translates into donor infrastructure. But 17% is not a mandate, and the road from here to November runs through a party apparatus that is visibly impatient with the pace of consolidation.

Hicks’ public pressure campaign is essentially the party treating primary politics like a startup runway problem: too many candidates burning through voter attention with no path to scale. The solution is the same in both cases. Cut what isn’t working before someone else decides the outcome for you.