Vice President Harris, who is considering a run for governor in California, holds a double-digit lead over a hypothetical 2026 gubernatorial field, new polling shows.
New data from the University of California, Irvine’s School of Social Ecology found Harris with 24 percent support when pitted against other declared and rumored candidates.
Businessman-turned-politician Rick Caruso, who’s reportedly considering a run for governor next year, was next up, with 9 percent support.
Despite Harris’s lead, a whopping 40 percent of Californians said they’re not yet sure which candidate they’d support to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).
But the former vice president fared even better when respondents were asked to choose between her and a generic Republican, earning 41 percent support to 29 percent, respectively.
The same polling also found Harris with a positive net 11 percent favorability rating among Californians, the highest among candidates tested.
After her 2024 loss in the presidential race, the political world is in suspense about Harris’s next move.
She’s reportedly giving serious consideration to a run for governor in the Golden State, which she previously represented in the Senate and where she served as state attorney general. She’s said to have given herself until the end of the summer to decide whether to enter the ring and, in the meantime, the wait has had somewhat of a chilling effect on the gubernatorial field.
California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis (D) and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond (D) have been running since 2023. Also in the ring on the Democratic side are former Rep. Katie Porter (Calif.), former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former State Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, former state Controller Betty Yee and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) in February decided against a run for governor, telling Politico that Harris’s candidacy “would be field-clearing.”
Harris has also cropped up in early 2028 polling as a Democratic front-runner for another White House bid — though the latest Emerson College data found support for another Harris presidential bid had fallen in recent months, putting her in second place behind former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg among a field of potential 2028 contenders.
The university conducted two statewide polls in partnership with Truedot. The first, which included the Harris favorability question, surveyed 2,143 California adults from May 27 to June 2. The second, which included the gubernatorial ballot question, surveyed 2,000 California adults from May 29 to June 4. The margin of error was 2.9 percentage points for the first survey and 3.6 points for the second.
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