This report will be updated every 30 minutes. This update was posted at 10pm.
Republican Steve Hilton led in the first count of California votes for governor, then returned to the top position about an hour later.
As the evening progressed, with more than half the precincts reporting, the Becerra-Hilton battle settled into a see-saw pattern, as the pair held their gap over Tom Steyer, about 6 points behind. Fewer than 35,000 votes separated the t0p two candidates from each other, while Steyer was more than 250,000 votes behind.
That is the gap that ballot watchers will focus on as the millions of ballots, most cast by mail, are counted. California’s top-two voting rules in effect since 2010 in effect means there are two winners in the primary. The top two candidates begin a five-month campaign this month.
Becerra had posted 22% of the first count, followed by Chad Bianco at 19% and Tom Steyer at 16%. But Bianco fell to 10% in the first update – and Steyer’s vote count grew to 20% in very early returns reported by the California Secretary of State’s Elections Division.
These top candidates matched the up and down polls of the past two weeks. The most recent polls showed support for Becerra surging past the others.
Hilton, who was endorsed by President Trump, saw his vote totals move past the 1 million mark, scoring 26.7% nearly two hours after the polls closed, compared to 25.9% for Becerra. Steyer was stuck just below 20%.
The $300 million primary campaign for governor was the most expensive in California history.
More than two-thirds of that came from Steyer’s own deep pockets. He spent more than $213 million. Independent expenditure committees pitched in nearly $80 million, spread among the top six candidates.
Today’s initial vote tally was likely to show an expected late surge in mail ballots, which could stretch out the ballot counting and a final determination of the top two finishers who will meet in November.
As of Monday, state election officials reported accepting 4.2 million votes by mail, about 18% of the state’s approximately 23.2 million registered voters. The last-minute voting also was a reflection of the uncertainty among voters about the governor candidates lingering in the last two months of the campaign.
Here are the total for leading candidates, as of 9:40pm, with 56% of the precincts reporting:
- Steve Hilton, 1,110,210, 26.7.%
- Xavier Becerra, 1,075,983, 25.9%
- Tom Steyer, 818,498, 19.7%
- Chad Bianco,469,022 11.3%
- Katie Porter, 208,743, 5.0%
- Matt Mahan, 189,583, 4.6%
- Antonio Villaraigosa, 55,479, 1.3%
- Tony Thurmond 27,941, 0.7%
Vote totals are expected to be updated every 30 minutes until midnight, then daily at 5 pm.
The long list of 61 governor candidates facing voters included two who had dropped out after ballots were printed, Rep. Erik Swalwell and Betty Yee. The list included 36 Democrats and 12 Republican; the remainder, like a big portion of the electorate, listed no party preference or minor party.
The top-two primary system was adopted in California as the result of a 2010 ballot measure (for congressional and state offices).
