This report has been updated to include the latest results of the ballot counting across California, as reported to the Secretary of State as of 6:01pm, June 10.
Stunning results in the California governor’s primary election released Tuesday evening showed that Democrat Xavier Becerra had nearly tripled his margin over Republican Steve Hilton – after doubling the margin on Monday – while third-place candidate Democrat Tom Steyer gained nearly 100,000 votes on Hilton.
Becerra continued to widen his lead on Wednesday, to more than 280,000.
The big surge in Steyer’s vote count, however, didn't continue into the next day, when he gained just 18,000 votes on the Republican leader.
With the pace of Steyer's gains slowing into the home stretch, Hilton's lead over Steyer, while slipping farther back from Becerra, proved to be too insurmountable for the billionaire Democrat.
Wednesday's count showed the former Fox News host and British immigrant still leading by more than 191,000 votes, assuring him of a spot in the runoff. Just over a half million votes remained to be counted on Thursday.
The Associated Press on Tuesday night determined that Hilton had a big enough lead over Steyer to move on, predicting that Hilton would join Becerra on the Nov. 3 General Election ballot. The AP on Friday declared that Becerra had enough votes to move forward.
The California Secretary of State’s Elections Division estimated that 94% of all ballots had been processed by 6pm June 10.
Steyer on June 7 had told his supporters: “We’re going to wait until every ballot is counted. We’re going to give democracy time to work. And we know we finished really strong.”
A similar 100,000-vote swing at the top of the ballot on June 5, the fourth day of vote counting, had bounced Becerra back into a slim 39,426-vote lead over Hilton. After another 600,000 mailed ballots were counted over the weekend, Becerra’s margin continued to grow, to nearly 88,000.
Becerra, who had trailed Hilton by more than 120,000 votes the day after the June 2 Primary Election, on Wednesday evening had 2,468,124 votes (28.0%), compared to Hilton’s 2,187,664votes (24.8%).
At the current pace, the final unofficial count could mostly wrap up on Thursday, June 11.
Here are the results of the leaders reported at 6:01pm, June 10:
- Xavier Becerra 2,468,124 28.0% (+280,460)
- Steve Hilton 2,187,664 24.8%(+191,685)
- Tom Steyer 1,995,979 22.6%
- Chad Bianco 902,295 10.2%
- Katie Porter 383,981 4.4%
- Matt Mahan 315,383 3.6%
Election officials reported that nearly 9.4 million votes had been processed through June 10, and estimated another 538,000 remained to be processed. Each day that Hilton and Becerra continued at their current percentages, Steyer’s chances grew dimmer.
The estimated 40% turnout is higher than most non-presidential year primary statewide elections, which have been around 35%.
On Sunday, June 7, President Trump called the California primary “a rigged election.”
In a Meet the Press interview on NBC, Trump told Kristen Welker, “They’re cheating on the election,” then refused to offer any evidence.
After the reporter repeated a request for evidence, Trump then told Welker: “Your elections are crooked, and you’re crooked, Meet the Press is crooked, and so is ABC and CBS and CNN – you’re one-sided, crooked networks.”
Trump then said “I’ve had enough,” and stood up and walked out of the interview.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's response to Trump’s unfounded claim? "There isn't a bigger sore loser in the country," the governor wrote on social media.
California state law requires county elections officials to report final official results to the Secretary of State by July 3. The Secretary of State has until July 10 to certify the results of the election.
