Hilton Says He Can Win California If Every Trump Voter Shows Up

Steve Hilton, the Republican nominee for California governor, says he can win on Nov. 3 if the people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 turn out again. The catch is that a midterm draws far fewer voters than a presidential year, and the latest poll has him 28 points behind Democrat Xavier Becerra.

Hilton laid out his math on Real America’s Voice on Tuesday. “I’ll need six million votes,” he said. “In 2024, President Trump got 6.1 million in California without even really campaigning here.” He called turnout “a big ask” because “you don’t get a presidential year turnout usually in the midterm,” but said, “the point is that we can do it.”

The numbers are public. The Secretary of State certified 6,081,697 votes for Trump in 2024, 38.3 percent, against 9,276,179 for Kamala Harris, in a presidential electorate of about 15.9 million. The last governor’s race, in 2022, drew 10.9 million votes for its two candidates: Gavin Newsom took 6,470,104 and Republican Brian Dahle 4,462,914.

Hilton’s threshold sits just under Trump’s whole 2024 total. Hilton told Steve Bannon’s War Room in May 2025 that he expected a turnout of about 11.8 million and that winning would take 5.9 million votes, the Daily Caller reported. That is 97 percent of Trump’s 2024 vote, and it leaves 5.9 million for everyone else, which is fewer votes than Newsom won four years ago. Trump’s total was also 1.6 million more than Dahle drew in 2022.

Polling shows no sign of it yet. Emerson College’s Oct. 17-19 survey of 1,000 likely voters had Becerra ahead 60 percent to 33 percent, with 7 percent undecided. Pushed to choose, undecided voters moved the margin to 64 to 36. Independents favored Becerra 46 percent to 36 percent. Applied to a 2022-sized electorate, 36 percent would be about 3.9 million votes, roughly 525,000 fewer than Dahle won.

The same poll found 33 percent of respondents approving of Trump’s job performance and 63 percent disapproving. On the economy, the top issue for 45 percent, 44 percent blamed Trump for the state of things, up from 27 percent a year earlier, while 38 percent blamed Newsom, down from 51 percent.

Becerra took the plurality in June’s open primary with 28 percent, Emerson noted. As ZeroHedge reported in May, Polymarket then gave Hilton a 10 percent chance of winning in November.

Hilton’s plan needs a presidential-year Republican turnout in a midterm, in a state where Trump’s approval stands at 33 percent.