So, you’re saying there’s a chance?

A new poll shared exclusively with the California Post shows Steve Hilton trailing Xavier Becerra 49.2% to 41% among likely November voters — with nearly 10% still undecided. That’s an eight-point race. Two months ago, Becerra was up 25.

Hilton’s own campaign framed it with numbers that should unsettle every Democrat who thought California was safely in the bag: they’ve cut the margin by 17 points in less than two months. And crucially, Becerra has fallen below 50 percent — the threshold that matters enormously in a race where the undecideds break heavily against incumbents and the environment is moving the wrong direction for Democrats nationally.

Let’s be direct about what’s driving this. California has one of the worst business climates in the country. Typhus is back in Los Angeles. Thirteen million pounds of waste were removed from a single park. The state has had $1 billion in Medicaid payments deferred by HHS during an active fraud investigation. The DOJ is investigating Newsom. Businesses are fleeing to Texas at a rate that makes economic migration look like a lifestyle trend. Fifty-six percent of Californians say the state is heading in the wrong direction.

And the man representing the party that produced all of this — Xavier Becerra — is the same HHS Secretary who oversaw the loss of 140,000 unaccompanied migrant children, called a facility where children were trafficked “a model” for the country, and has been dodging California press questions about his record ever since a trafficking victim named him by name on camera.

Hilton has been running as a sensible conservative with real solutions to California’s endemic problems — crime, homelessness, the cost of living, the business flight — rather than as a protest candidate who expects the state is lost before the campaign starts. That approach is apparently resonating in ways the political class underestimated.

Can he win? The honest answer is: still unlikely. California has 6 million registered Republicans against many more Democrats, and the union stranglehold on the state’s political machinery is real. Democrats have won every statewide office for a generation. The machines that turn out Democratic votes in California are some of the most sophisticated in the country.

But “still unlikely” and “impossible” are different things. A Berkeley poll a week earlier showed Becerra up 18. The California Post poll shows him up 8 — below 50% — with 70 days to go.

More and more Californians are waking up to the fact that the progressive regime is an abject failure. Change takes time. The signs are there.

If California Republicans turn out in numbers proportional to their registration, if Becerra’s Medicaid fraud and child trafficking record lands the way it should, and if the national environment continues its current trajectory — this race is not over. Steve Hilton is closing. Becerra is stuck below 50. That’s a race worth watching.

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