Nearly Half of California Voters Would Back Harris for Governor, Poll Shows
A late-October survey in Vice President Kamala Harris’s home state showed strong Democratic backing if she ran in the 2026 race for governor. She has not said what she plans to do next.
Vice President Kamala Harris has offered no hint of what she may do next after her bid for the White House failed, but a recent poll in her home state of California in late October showed that if she were to run for governor there in 2026, nearly half of voters were open to supporting her.
Forty-six percent of registered voters, in California, when asked if they would back Ms. Harris for governor if she were not elected president, answered that they were very likely or somewhat likely to vote for her, according to the poll conducted by the University of California at Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Los Angeles Times. While the hypothetical situation it asked about did not include a named challenger, the poll found the appetite for a Harris candidacy among Democrats, who outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 on the state’s voter rolls, at 72 percent.
The poll was conducted from Oct. 22-29, before former President Donald J. Trump defeated Ms. Harris in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
Gavin Newsom, California’s current governor, is serving his second term and cannot seek another when he steps down in two years. The race to take his place as the leader of the nation’s most populous state is expected to draw interest from numerous top Democrats.
Ms. Harris won in the West Coast, the Northeast and a smattering of other states, but was swept in seven key battleground states by Mr. Trump and is on pace to lose the popular vote to him. Originally from the Bay Area, she served in increasingly powerful roles in California over the course of her political career, including as state attorney general and U.S. senator, before being elected vice president in 2020.
Ms. Harris — who has kept a home in the upscale West Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood with her husband, Doug Emhoff — has not discussed her future plans. Representatives for the vice president did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday about the poll.
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