CA120: Twins – the 2026 governor simulator

The most intense parlor game in Sacramento is that of projecting the composition of June’s Top Two gubernatorial primary. Not who among the dozen leading candidates will win, per se, but what will be the partisanship of the two that make it to the General Election, and if that could actually be two Republicans.

It is unlikely, but consequences for Democrats would be severe. With no Democrat atop the general election ballot, Democratic turnout would almost certainly collapse. For starters, this would likely allow Republicans to hold several of the congressional districts redrawn under Prop 50 – essentially stealing away that 2025 procedural victory from Democrats, and potentially cost Democrats the House majority.

It would also jeopardize dozens of legislative seats, impact statewide ballot measures, and potentially even other statewide offices. Additional consequences could spread up and down the state when this skewed turnout hits local elections.

And that’s all before even considering what would happen if in 2027 a Republican was sworn into office, bringing the Democratic supermajorities in both houses to a screeching halt.

And you thought morale among Democratic voters was low after the last election?  Imagine the recriminations that would come for a Democratic party that let this happen.

Most experienced politicos will think this is hyperbole and dismiss the idea outright. The argument is simple: Democrats will coalesce behind one of their candidates, Republicans will rally behind one of theirs, and we will get what has happened every Gubernatorial election since California adopted the Top Two system – a General Election matchup between a Dem and a Rep.

But the argument that “it has always happened” is based on exactly three past elections – 2014, 2018 and 2022. Hardly overwhelming evidence. And we have seen examples of minor party winning both of the Top Two spots – the first was in 2012 when Republicans Gary Miller and Bob Dutton rose out of a large field of candidates in the 31^st Congressional district, Resulting in a one-term Republican gain in a seat that has since safely elected Democratic Representative Pete Aguilar. Most Recently, in 2022, then-Democrat Marie Alvarado Gil won in a district that was 60% Republican voting, thanks to Democratic party efforts to elevate the second Democrat and push both across the finish line in a race where six Republicans were splitting up their own vote.

While it may be very unlikely for two Republicans to make the runoff, the fact is that if there was ever a perfect storm in which this could happen we are experiencing it now. Two candidates splitting the bulk of approximately 40% of the vote expected to be cast for Republicans, and an incredibly fractured field of six to eight Democrats are splitting the remaining 60%.

I have sworn off making predictions after 2016 when I made several bets around town that the US Senate primary would feature a Democrat and Republican, and I lost that bet when Democrats Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez advanced. But, that hasn’t stopped me from doing some of the math.

For months I’ve been using the latest public polls to model the upcoming primary to answer the question of what this field of candidates will generate.  The method is similar to the kind of tools used by FiveThirtyEight and other election forecasters, and relies on running thousands of simulations of the election, then figuring out how many are coming back as Democrat vs. Republican, or an intra-party contest between two Democrats or two Republicans.

While it may be very unlikely for two Republicans to make the runoff, the fact is that if there was ever a perfect storm in which this could happen we are experiencing it now.

What I built has gotten more sophisticated, although I won’t ever claim it is as thorough as a full Nate Silver model. In its current form it utilizes the most recent polls, allows for additional private polls to be entered, considers money raised and spent, and the fundamentals of the election – like the projected share of votes that will be cast for Democratic and Republican candidates, and the fact that there is little or no crossover voting in California primaries.

For fun, and to illustrate the concern, you can now use my tool to project the election yourself on this site: TWINS – California 2026 Governor Simulator

You can select what candidates you want to keep in the race, select which pre-loaded polls to include, or enter your own polling results. The system will let you tinker with the projected electorate, the share of votes that will go to minor party candidates, and even, if you’re crazy, include the betting markets in your projections. Then, in a matter of moments you can have your projection – with the most likely first and second place candidates, the percentage of time each of three partisan top two scenarios comes to fruition, and even click through actual results of some of the scenarios.

And, to think through more possibilities, you can see what might happen if certain candidates drop out, or if you give your favorite candidate a hundred-million-dollar independent expenditure.

The program has flaws, obviously – the greatest of which being that polling this far out isn’t as indicative of final outcomes as we would like to think. And for someone like San Jose Matt Mahan in particular, his entry means that he has been in few polls and the only way seemingly to get him into the runoff given the current data is to include and heavily weight the betting market data, which, at the time of writing, gives him a 23 percent chance despite his relative unknown status in the race.

And of course reality will intervene. If two Republicans are projected going into May, I would expect a lot of focus on elevating one of the Republicans, to essentially knock out the other and ensure a Democrat vs. Republican General.

We saw this exact thing done in 2018 when Governor Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa were seen as likely Top Two that could come out of the gubernatorial primary. At that time, polling was done that showed John Cox would benefit over Travis Allen if he got the Trump endorsement and, depending on who you believe, either Cox’ consultants or Newsom allies or both appealed to the Trump political team to get that endorsement done just in time to box out Villaraigosa from getting that second spot.

A similar thing could happen here – but, of course, for any candidate who thinks they may benefit from elevating one Republican, there will be others who see that as weakening their chances of getting into the second spot. And in this large field of Democrats fighting and scratching to get into double-digits, who among them would have the capacity for this “advance the favored Republican” side-quest?

While we are still unaware of how this all will shake out, this tool will be online for anyone to take the latest data and play the game of projecting what are possible outcomes for June.