Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass carried 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods in last week’s primary—far more than Nithya Raman’s seven and Heather Pratt’s one—helping her finish first and qualify for the Nov. 3 runoff.
When the primary results started to settle, it became clear that Karen Bass’s path to first place ran through one neighborhood network after another—35 Latino-majority communities in Los Angeles, including Boyle Heights, Pacoima, and Historic South-Central.
That haul, an analysis of precinct data shows, was more than Raman and Pratt combined. It also marked a sharp jump from 2022, when Bass won 24 Latino-majority neighborhoods in a primary race against Rick Caruso and Kevin de León.
Raman finished a distant second with seven Latino-majority neighborhoods, including Highland Park, El Sereno, and Lincoln Heights. Pratt won only one Latino-majority neighborhood—Harbor City, which is 51% Latino, according to the analysis.
Why those counts mattered wasn’t just arithmetic. Latinos make up about 37% of the electorate in Los Angeles. and while polls before the election suggested no single candidate had a lock on their votes. Bass was leading among Latinos in a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll in March—co-sponsored by The Times—with 29% support. followed by Pratt at 16% and Raman at the bottom at 9%. By May, another Berkeley IGS poll showed Raman surged to 24% among Latinos, with Pratt at 21% and Bass at 20%.
The precinct-level data released by the county doesn’t show how Latinos specifically voted—how people voted isn’t broken down by ethnicity at that level. Instead, the analysis tracked how precincts voted and compared those results with Census data.
Even so, the political stakes were stark. Bass’s strongest argument to Latino voters had been her aggressive posture toward the Trump administration’s immigration raids and mass detentions last year, a forceful challenge that supporters say helped her mobilize communities.
“Latinos came out for her because she has done a really, really good job in trying to fight the Trump administration,” said Nilza Serrano, the president of Avance Democratic Club, a Latino Democratic organization that endorsed Bass.
The endorsements didn’t come out of nowhere. Avance had endorsed Caruso in the runoff with Bass four years ago. a dynamic that led Bass to suggest Caruso bought their support. Bass later apologized to the group. This time around. she worked behind the scenes to secure endorsements from Democratic clubs like Avance and from prominent Latino figures including Dolores Huerta. along with politicians like U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).
Matt Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o studies at UCLA, said the difference in who showed up for Bass helped shape perceptions.
“She had a lot more established politicos and respected figures in the Latino community,” Barreto said. “It makes her seem like the more established choice.”
There was also a simpler imbalance in the field: Caruso wasn’t in the race this year. Four years ago, Caruso poured more than $100 million into his mayoral campaign and flooded airwaves and televisions with Spanish language ads.
Bass did carry more Latino-majority neighborhoods than Caruso overall in 2022—24 compared with Caruso’s 16—but Caruso actually performed better in the most heavily Latino neighborhoods. In neighborhoods where populations were at least 80% Latino, Caruso received 34% of the vote in 2022, while Bass had 27%.
This year, Bass took 38% in those neighborhoods, while Raman had 25%. Pratt had about 17% support in that same segment.
Barreto also pointed to what Pratt didn’t press as hard. He said Pratt didn’t take a strong stand against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, which he said hurt her appeal to Latinos.
During the sole mayoral debate between the three candidates May 6, Pratt said there wouldn’t be major ICE raids on his watch.
“If they’re legal or illegal, if they’re a danger — I want them off our streets, that’s what I said,” Pratt said. “ICE won’t be coming here because … everybody they’re supposedly looking for, they’re going to be in jail when I’m mayor.”
Fernando Guerra, the director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said Pratt lacked the kind of clear message that can travel through communities, along with the messenger to deliver it.
“Why would he get any votes when he didn’t have a message, didn’t have a messenger and didn’t have a vehicle for that message?” Guerra asked. “He didn’t fund to organize a ground game in any of the Latino neighborhoods.”
Pratt’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Los Angeles, where politics often turns on who can show up in the right rooms, the Latino vote became a contest not only of policy but of visibility.
The analysis found that Raman made a concerted effort to win the Latino vote as well. She ran ads in Spanish and held numerous events in heavily Latino areas. including a happy hour in Boyle Heights. meeting with street vendors and customers in Pico-Union. and speaking with business owners on Olvera Street.
Six of the Latino-majority neighborhoods Raman won—El Sereno, Lincoln Heights, Highland Park, Montecito Heights, Glassell Park, and Cypress Park—had flipped from supporting Bass in 2022. Raman’s seventh Latino-majority neighborhood, Westlake, was carried by Caruso in 2022.
Raman, who immigrated to the U.S. from India with her family as a child, framed the contrast in terms of sanctuary policy and enforcement.
In a statement, she said she was “proud to have co-authored L.A.’s Sanctuary City Ordinance and I will enforce it without apology as mayor. I will expand deportation defense funding and make sure no city data is ever used for immigration enforcement.”
“I’ll work every day to make Los Angeles more affordable and create more opportunity, so that Latino families — and all families — can afford to live here and thrive,” Raman said.
For some voters, the decisions were less about slogans than about feeling urgency—and feeling ignored.
Marco Santana, 35, a longtime Van Nuys resident who ran for City Council in 2023, said he was considering supporting Bass until Raman got into the race. For Santana, it wasn’t only identity.
“For me, it’s not just being Latino, it’s also the intersectionality of being relatively young, being first generation,” Santana said. “I feel this sense of urgency from her,” he said.
Santana’s own calculation reflects how close the margins can feel even when the neighborhood totals look dramatic.
Bass flipped Boyle Heights and Historic South-Central, two neighborhoods that were won by De León in 2022. She also took Pacoima, Arleta, and Sylmar—areas in the San Fernando Valley that Caruso won in the 2022 primary.
Bass’s campaign said her support among Latinos was organic.
“This wasn’t some campaign strategy. Karen Bass is the parent of Latino kids and grandchildren and has been in the trenches with these communities for decades,” said Alex Stack, a campaign spokesperson for Bass. “Karen Bass has always fought for the Latino community.”
Yet not every voter started from the same place.
Stephenie Lucio, a resident of Northridge, said she’d been undecided until about a week before the election. She told of a nagging concern that Bass hadn’t done enough to address the issues that were top of mind for her. including homelessness and the impact immigration raids had had on Latinos in L.A.
In the end, Lucio said she voted for Bass, but “a little bit reluctantly.” She said she saw the incumbent as “really speaking up about things that are important to me and the Latino community.”
With Bass finishing first, she will move into the Nov. 3 runoff against Raman. and the precinct math that put 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods into her column will likely remain central to the fight for turnout—especially among communities still weighing which candidate feels closest to their daily reality. and their fears.
Karen Bass Nithya Raman Heather Pratt Los Angeles mayoral primary Latino-majority neighborhoods precinct data Nov. 3 runoff immigration raids sanctuary city ordinance