California voters will go to the polls to vote in a primary election in a few months, to choose the candidates for governor who will move on to the general election. But as a new poll shows, the result might be pretty shocking and may even give rise to a movement to change the way the state's primaries are conducted. Because as things stand right now, there is a very real chance that come November, the overwhelmingly-Democratic state might only have two Republican candidates on the ballot to choose from. Which, as I said, would be pretty shocking.

Personally, I have never been a fan of the new primary system here. It leads to all sorts of campaign shenanigans, and often freezes out political parties from the general election ballot. For the most part, this means that Republican voters in the state are often presented with the choice of only two Democrats to vote for in the general election. That has never seemed fair to me, even though I am not a Republican. Primaries are low-turnout elections, but they can prevent major political parties from appearing on the general election ballot, when far more people turn out to vote. And now California's Democrats are in danger of the shoe being on the other foot -- which may be what is necessary to bring a change to the system.

Currently, California holds a "top-two jungle primary." No, that doesn't mean we swing from vines like Tarzan when we go vote, it instead means that the primary is non-partisan, with candidates from all parties on the same ballot. We used to have "closed primaries," where Democratic voters were given a ballot with only Democrats on it, and all other parties had their own individual ballots as well. The winner of each party's primary moved on to compete in the general election against each other, with one candidate from each party appearing. Nowadays, only the top two winners -- no matter their party -- move on to the general election ballot. So if there are two strong Democrats, both move on and face off against each other in November, while the Republicans are left out in the cold.

Governor Gavin Newsom is term-limited and cannot run for re-election. This has led to a wide-open field, with a number of both Republican and Democratic candidates running. But the latest poll shows a very tight race between the top three -- and two of them are Republicans. Here are the results of the recent Emerson College Poll:

17.1 percent -- Steve Hilton (R)

14.1 -- Eric Swalwell (D)

13.5 -- Chad Bianco (R)

9.8 -- Katie Porter (D)

8.8 -- Tom Steyer (D)

3.5 -- Xavier Becerra (D)

3.4 -- Matt Mahan (D)

(There are also four other Democrats and one other Republican in the race, all polling below three percent.)

That should be a wake-up call to California Democrats. If the election were held today, there is a very good chance that the two top Republicans, Hilton and Bianco, would wind up moving on to the general election, leaving no Democrat on the November ballot at all.

Of course, the election isn't happening today, and there is one other number worth paying attention to from that poll. The largest response in the poll was actually "Undecided," which came in at 21.2 percent. Californians are simply not paying much attention to the race yet, and the only ads I have personally seen on television so far have been from Tom Steyer (who is wealthy and self-funding his own campaign -- he's got money to burn on early ads, while the others don't, to put this another way). It's still early days, and the polling could shift dramatically once the voters actually start paying more attention (and once all the strong candidates start running ads).

But the race does show a big drawback of the top-two primary system. If one party puts up only two strong contenders while the other party has multiple candidates with a decent amount of support, then it can dilute the power of the second party in the election -- even if they are the majority party in the state. In a crowded field, the two candidates from the first party can wind up winning, even with a very small share of the overall vote.

California Democrats might not have to face the nightmare of only seeing two Republicans on the November ballot, however. There are a number of ways this could be avoided. For one, when those undecided voters finally do decide, it could boost the top Democrats' numbers enough for at least one of them (and possibly both) to beat at least one of the Republican candidates (indeed, Swalwell is currently in front of Bianco, although not by much). Or if the race does look like it could produce two Republican winners, then a few of the Democrats running could decide to drop out and endorse one of the other Democrats (which may happen anyway, if some of them run out of money during the campaign season). That, however, would require these politicians to put their own ambitions aside for the greater good of the party -- which is a rare thing to actually occur in politics. The best way for this to happen, given the current polling, would be for Tom Steyer to drop out, since he's got enough support to actually matter to the other two strong Democrats. But Steyer is self-financing -- meaning money pressures aren't an issue for him. So I seriously doubt he'd end his race just to boost other Democrats.

As I said, it is still early days. The polling could shift. At least one Democrat could begin to poll better than both of the strong Republican candidates. Which brings up another flaw of the top-two system. In most California races (the statewide ones, at least), the more common situation is that two Democrats are running strong while being trailed by one Republican. So what the top Democrat has been known to do (far too often) is to secretly funnel money into the Republican's campaign. Some shadowy political action committee will start running ads for the Republican, touting how close to Donald Trump he or she is (spinning this as a positive thing), to try to convince all the Republican voters in the state to support him or her. The idea is to boost the Republican just enough to beat the other Democrat in the race -- which leads to only one Democrat on the November ballot, facing off against one Republican. This pretty much guarantees the Democrat will win the general election (since there are so many more Democratic voters in the state than Republicans). This avoids a head-to-head contest between two Democrats, which would be a tougher November race for either of them to win. But this is all awfully underhanded and sneaky, you've got to admit -- a Democratic candidate running ads in support of a Republican challenger. Nevertheless, it frequently happens.

Such shenanigans would not be necessary (or effective) if the state made an adjustment to their primary system. Personally, I am a big fan of how Alaska has set its election system up, which I think could work just as well for California. Alaska also has an open ("jungle") primary, but they advance the top four candidates to the general election. This pretty much guarantees that the two major political parties both get to have at least one of their candidates on the general election ballot, which seems a lot more fair. It also makes machinations designed to knock people off the general election ballot almost impossible, since you'd have to try to boost three other candidates to move someone else into fifth place.

Alaska then uses ranked-choice voting in their general election, which isn't as chaotic as most ranked-choice voting because there are only four candidates to choose from. This means that mathematically there can only be three cycles of vote-counting before one candidate goes over 50 percent and wins (unlike ranked-choice vote-counting in primaries with ten or more candidates, which can lead to lots and lots of recounts). Alaska really has combined the best of both worlds, in terms of their hybrid election system.

Sadly, for California to reconsider how our elections are run, we will probably have to have at least one election where the whole system blows up in the Democrats' faces. It is still a longshot -- the primary campaign season has really only just begun here -- but as things stand now, the governor's race this year might prove to be the one that does backfire on Democrats. Heading into a general election with only two Republicans to vote for to lead the state would certainly be a wake-up call that our top-two primary system needs some tinkering. My guess is that it won't happen this way -- by the time of the primary, at least one Democrat should be doing much better than this one poll indicates -- but even contemplating such an outcome shows the flaws of the current system in a way Democrats have not yet had to face in the Golden State.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant