Surprised there isn’t already a thread.
The Wikl article: 2026 California gubernatorial election - Wikipedia
Hadn’t thought of this, from CNN:
California’s good government dream has a nightmare flaw for state Democrats:
Any California Dopers who’d like to weigh in? Any non-Golden Staters who are following the campaign?
Eh. I’m sure there’s stuff to discuss on the race, but that article is about as deep as a puddle. In the somewhat unlikely case of the jungle primary (a term that doesn’t even appear in the article) resulting in two Republican candidates, 1) the winner would probably be recalled ASAP and 2) hopefully it will promote the use of ranked choice or approval voting instead.
AIUI, there are only two Republican candidates and like eight or nine Democrats splitting the vote. The primary is still two months away, so I expect that as it draws closer some of those will likely drop out and their supporters will coalesce around one or two people, making an R-vs-R general unlikely.
A simple fix is for the legislature to change the top two system to a top four like Alaska does. Then use RCV for the general election. Heck, EVERY state should be using Alaska’s system.
I haven’t heard too much from any of the candidates, except for one (I’m pretty sure he’s a Democrat) who has an ad on some of the streaming platforms where he says “Does California need MAGA? Of course not!! But the status quo isn’t working either”.
It’s kinda interesting that there’s been so little info about the candidates so far. Obviously if you go to their websites I’m sure there’s plenty of info, but so far, I haven’t seen a ton of it being pushed out to voters.
There was supposed to be a debate for the Democratic candidates but apparently it got cancelled because there was tons of controversy over the racial makeup of the panelists leading to the school that was going to host the debate cancelling it. Siiiiiigh… Shooting ourselves in the foot once again. Typical.
Ranked choice voting isn’t an election system; it’s a whole category of election systems. I’m guessing that the one that Alaska uses is IRV (Instant Runoff Voting), because it’s the easiest to understand, but there are other RCV systems that are better than IRV in every other way.
Personally, I think that the best voting system is approval voting. It’s one of the most robust systems against the various paradoces of voting (it’s not completely bulletproof, but then, it’s been mathematically proven that no system is), it’s easy to understand, and it tends to result in moderates.
The most commercials I’ve seen come from Democrat Tom Steyer, who comes from the business world, and whose commercials almost all feature promises that he can’t keep, like cutting utility bills 25%, or building 1 million affordable houses, and without any even high-level strategy about how he’s going to do these things. He has now added anti-Trump things as well, bandwagon style, and appeals to “his” previous accomplishments (school lunches? etc.).
Swalwell is now the front-running Democrat, and he has some fairly typical Democratic politician flavored ads. He is also being targeted by Trump’s DOJ (I think) for supposed connections many years ago to a Chinese spy.
At present it appears that the total number of candidates plus the lack of “star power” Democratic candidates, could actually result in two Republicans winning the June 2 primary. A Republican governor would not, perhaps, be as dire as the Republican presidency, especially considering the super-majority Democratic legislature, but it certainly could effect all the appointive state offices, including Attorney General.
The strategy will probably work. It has in the past
During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to tackle power bills. “I will cut the price of energy and electricity in half,” he said at one rally in Detroit in October 2024. “12 months from January 20 – I take office on January 20 – your electric bill, including cars, air conditioning, heaters, everything, the total electric bill will be 50, 5-0 per cent, less.”
His poll numbers haven’t moved, he’s still at around 10%, and the 3rd-place Democrat (5th overall).
The two Republicans are still in a fairly healthy lead, at 16% and 14.5%.
The third Democrat I haven’t mentioned is Katie Porter, who also ran unsuccessfully for Senator in 2024. She was in the lead at one point, but that was before either Swalwell or Steyer was in the race. If she were to drop out (she won’t) and endorse one of the other two leading Democrats, that would certainly swing enough votes so one of the general election candidates would be a Democrat. Even though she’s ahead of Steyer, she is running zero ads that I have seen, and really doesn’t have a chance of winning.
Here’s a link to some polling data (their methodology is to aggregate various polls): California 2026 Governor Election - Primary Polling Average — Race to the WH
Scroll down and you’ll see a graph with the polling history of these 5 candidates since January 1 2025, and further down the actual polls used for the graph.
An interesting conundrum… You want to vote for the candidate who has the best interests of the people at heart. But what’s in the best interests of the people is for some candidates to drop out, so Democrats can coalesce on at least one of them. So you’ll end up with the ones who survive (if any) being the ones who didn’t drop out, and who are therefore the ones you don’t want to vote for.
I don’t particularly want to vote for Katie Perry, although I suppose I prefer her to Steyer.
Swalwell is actually my congressman right now, so I know him pretty well. I think he’s pretty good.
I occasionally watch YouTube on my TV where I have to endure ads and Steyer is seemingly buying a shit-ton of YouTube time. I guess it’s nice being a billionaire. Albeit he’s trying to run as a progressive billionaire.
He doesn’t seem to be going anywhere fast, the more strident progressives (real or affected) usually don’t seem to on a state level. Or at least not recently (I guess one could call Boxer a progressive for her time, but she was low-key about it as a campaigner). He should probably fold up and endorse Porter or Swalwell and put his money to more productive use. But it is his money…so, whatever I guess.
I’ve never been a big fan of her music myself 
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I read this article or a similar one a couple of days ago. It’s just more clickbait. People will drop out or fade to nothing. If Newsome, Harris and Pelosi endorse someone, it will be a seachange.
Ugh. None of them are that inspiring. I suppose of the top-polling, I’d go for Katie Porter; this is presuming that only those will still be around when voting time comes. From the larger list, Betty Yee has always struck me as competent, which is a quality I like in politicians.
Just goes to show how divorced I am from pop culture.
Not sure which article you are referring to (“this article”). The one I linked to is just an amalgamation of polls, and not intended as any more of a prediction of the outcome than any other poll or set of polls. There is, however, only 2 months left to the primary, so if any dropping out or endorsing is going to happen, it needs to be pretty soon.
I was referring to the OP, not your polling data. I apologize for the confusion.