Since Election Day on Tuesday, Los Angeles County has started the lengthy task of counting late provisional ballots.
The race for second place in the mayoral election is shifting, which may raise concerns for Spencer Pratt’s supporters as well as those believing Los Angeles should adopt a more centrist, practical approach.
The update from Friday afternoon brought in about 140,000 new votes, with around 42.7% of them coming from Los Angeles itself.
Mayor Karen Bass continues to lead with 34.98% of the total votes. The focus now is on the tense competition for the second runoff position between Pratt and City Councilwoman Nitya Raman.
The latest figures were particularly encouraging for Raman.
Before this update, I thought Raman would need to surpass Pratt by roughly 11 percentage points in the remaining votes to have a hopeful chance of overtaking him.
However, she exceeded those expectations.
In the recent update, Raman secured 23,115 votes, while Pratt garnered 10,711 and Bass 20,419. Essentially, Raman outperformed Pratt by 12,404 votes in this batch alone.
To clarify, she received more than twice the votes that Pratt did in this round.
The latest totals show 215,868 votes for Bass, 174,260 for Pratt, and 153,588 for Raman.
Although Pratt is still in second place, the distance between him and Raman has shrunk to just 20,672 votes.
Experts believe there are still approximately 550,000 to 600,000 ballots left to count across the county, likely including over 200,000 votes for the mayoral race.
If Raman keeps performing like this, she certainly has a chance to close the gap.
It seems that the remaining votes are aligning with what many seasoned California election watchers anticipated. Late-counted ballots have historically skewed younger, more urban, and more progressive than those counted on election night.
A few days ago, Pratt seemed to have an easier road to the runoff.
Now, that path appears quite constrained.
This ongoing count casts light on issues within California’s election framework.
Many voters expect elections to conclude simply: polls close, votes are tallied, and a winner is declared.
Instead, Californians will witness fluctuations in the results as early votes continue to come in over the next several days and weeks.
To be clear, there’s no evidence of any fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral election.
Yet, the confidence in the process can be shaken when results shift dramatically after Election Day.
If Pratt ultimately doesn’t make it, despite being in the lead for much of the week, it would certainly be a blow to his supporters.
Moreover, if he fails to secure a spot in the runoff, it might reflect broader sentiments about Los Angeles’ trajectory.
His campaign has centered on quality of life, public safety, homelessness, and basic functionality of City Hall.
If a pragmatic, solutions-focused candidate does not reach the runoff, some Angelenos might feel that the city isn’t ready for transformative change.
In the gubernatorial election, Xavier Becerra seems likely to move forward to the runoff in November, currently edging ahead of Steve Hilton.
Meanwhile, Tom Steyer’s chances have plummeted from challenging to nearly impossible. Hilton is ahead of him by 336,088 votes, and, with approximately 3.1 million votes left statewide, Steyer would need an extraordinary margin of 11 points in the remaining votes to catch up.
That’s a tall order.
The remaining votes aren’t just a two-way battle between Hilton and Steyer; they’re being split among Becerra, Hilton, Steyer, Chad Bianco, and Katie Porter.
Steyer would need some late ballots to swing drastically in his favor, but that would also mean Hilton failing to perform well.
Mathematically, Steyer still has a chance.
But politically, the odds are heavily against him.
Unless the remaining ballots diverge significantly from those already counted, Hilton seems to maintain an edge over Becerra. It presents California voters with something they may not see in the Los Angeles mayoral contest: an engaging debate between two candidates with starkly distinct visions for the future.
John Fleischman, a seasoned strategist in California politics, shares insights on these dynamics.
