The Associated Press projected Monday afternoon that Councilmember Nithya Raman had advanced to the November runoff in the Los Angeles mayoral race, setting up a contest against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass after Raman erased a roughly 40,000-vote deficit from election night.
The projection came a day after Raman moved into second place since ballots began being counted less than a week ago and following several days of shrinking margins between Raman and former reality television star Spencer Pratt.
As of Monday afternoon’s latest vote count update, Bass led the field with 34.32% of the vote, followed by Raman with 28.55% and Pratt with 25.83%. Raman led Pratt by roughly 21,800 votes after trailing him by about 40,000 votes on election night.
The AP estimated that roughly 93% of votes had been counted as of Monday afternoon.
Raman celebrated the projection Monday evening, calling it an opportunity to continue her campaign for what she described as “a healthier, safer, more affordable, and more joyful Los Angeles.”
“I’m incredibly honored that voters have given us the opportunity to advance to the general election for Mayor of Los Angeles,” Raman said in a statement. “To the thousands of supporters who knocked doors, made calls, sent texts, donated, and opened their homes for events across the city, and to everyone else who made this moment possible: thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
Raman also renewed her criticism of City Hall, arguing that “working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them.”
Bass’ campaign quickly welcomed the matchup.
“A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning,” said Douglas Herman, a strategist for the Bass campaign.
A Bass-Raman runoff would pit the incumbent mayor against a progressive challenger who has positioned herself to Bass’ left on issues including homelessness, housing and public safety.
Bass is running on her record as an incumbent who says she has reduced homelessness, expanded affordable housing, driven down crime and begun tackling long-neglected infrastructure problems.
Raman has argued that the city remains too slow, too expensive and too poorly managed, pointing to broken streetlights, potholes, rising housing costs, costly homelessness programs and what she describes as a lack of urgency from City Hall.
At debates and forums throughout the campaign, Raman cast herself as a systems-focused challenger who would push city departments harder, while Bass argued Raman shares responsibility for the city’s homelessness response as a city councilmember and as chair of the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee.
The two have also sharply differed over policing and homelessness enforcement. Bass has called for hiring more officers and defending her Inside Safe homelessness program, while Raman has criticized the cost of police raises, called for broader public-safety responses and argued that the city needs a more accountable and cost-effective homelessness system.
Pratt’s campaign did not immediately respond Monday evening to a request for comment on the AP projection.
Earlier Monday, before the AP call, Pratt urged supporters to remain patient as ballots continued to be counted. “Folks, we’re dealing with a fraction of a percentage point difference, there’s still hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding, and L.A. officials have given us the next three weeks to count! Let’s git-r-dun,” Pratt wrote on X.
Before the AP projection was issued Monday evening, political observers said that the vote shift reflected longstanding California ballot-counting pattern and increasingly pointed toward a Bass-Raman runoff.
“The primary reason for this dramatic shift is that Republicans were over-represented in the early voting, while Democrats were over-represented in the later votes,” former Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said Monday. “This is typical of our elections.”
Yaroslavsky said the pattern is typical in California elections but was amplified this year by strategic voting behavior. Republicans were encouraged to vote early, while some Democratic voters held onto their ballots amid uncertainty surrounding the gubernatorial race and concerns that the two leading Republicans could advance to the runoff, shutting Democrats out of the contest.
“As a result, an unprecedented percentage of Democrats voted the weekend before the election,” he said, creating a huge surge of Raman and some Bass votes that were only counted in the last five days.
Michael Trujillo, a Democratic political strategist who is not affiliated with any mayoral campaign, said another factor may have been the collapse of Eric Stalwell’s gubernatorial campaign.
“Young people and Democrats were holding their ballots because of the Eric Swalwell implosion,” he said. “Voters wanted to make sure that who they were voting for was someone that wasn’t going to be dropping out.”
Swalwell, a former congressman who was widely viewed as one of the leading Democratic candidates in the governor’s race, withdrew from the contest in April following allegations of sexual misconduct and assault, which he denied.
Trujillo estimated that roughly 38% of the outstanding ballots were from the city of Los Angeles, leaving approximately 140,000 city ballots left to be counted before Monday’s latest update.
He said the remaining vote did not appear to favor Pratt.
Pratt would need to win more of the remaining ballots than Raman to catch up and reach the runoff, Trujillo said. “The trend doesn’t suggest that’s happening.”
Veteran political analyst Dan Schnur said the vote swing itself is not unusual in California, where large numbers of vote-by-mail ballots are often counted after Election Day.
Four years ago, real estate developer Rick Caruso led Bass on election night before later-counted ballots shifted the race in Bass’ favor.
“What we see now with Pratt and Raman is a very similar dynamic,” Schnur said.
Schnur said a Bass-Raman runoff could significanlty alter the dynamics of the November campaign.
“This becomes a much more difficult and much more challenging race for Bass,” Schnur said. “She and her advisors believe that they knew exactly how to run against Pratt. They would run the same anti-conservative playbook that they used against Caruso four years ago. But running against a more progressive challenger is going to be much more of a challenge.”
Raman’s emergence as Bass’ runoff opponents presents a different challenge, he said.
“Bass got very comfortable at criticizing Caruso for being too conservative,” he said. “She may not have nearly as much experience at criticizing an opponent for being too liberal.”
The shifting vote totals have also drawn national attention.
President Donald Trump repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that fraud was affecting California’s vote count and reacted to Ramans’ overtaking Pratt by declaring on Truth Social early Monday that there was “No way this could have happened. Rigged Election!”
Analysts interviewed Monday, however, said the vote shifts are consistent with California’s vote-by-mail system and the demographics of ballots that are typically counted late in the process.
“There’s no widespread fraud,” Trujillo said. “You’re just seeing Democrats who held onto their ballots longer voting and their ballots counting in a little later than usual.”