MAGA Blames – Spencer Pratt’s fall from a projected Los Angeles mayoral runoff spot has triggered a familiar MAGA response: accusations of rigged elections, despite California’s open primary structure and ongoing ballot counts. President Donald Trump and allies pointed to s
By the time the third ballot drop didn’t turn Spencer Pratt into a sure thing, the shock in right-wing feeds had already shifted into something sharper: the belief that fraud must explain what polling and momentum couldn’t.
Pratt. a MAGA-aligned former reality TV star. is now on his way to being eliminated from the Los Angeles mayoral primary—despite a city electorate that is overwhelmingly Democratic. He currently trails incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman in a primary from which only two candidates will advance.
For weeks. conservative outlets and right-wing talking heads tried to frame Pratt as a shoe-in for the Los Angeles mayoral general election by an unbeatable margin. That framing never held up cleanly. California’s open primary system puts candidates of all parties into a single pool, with the top two moving on. Polling consistently showed Pratt locked in a tight race for second with Raman, and late surveys gave Raman the edge.
Then the weekend count began to tilt in Raman’s direction. Pratt’s position slid as Raman surged ahead over the weekend while ballots continued to be counted, leaving Pratt facing the possibility that he won’t make the runoff.
The explanation that took hold in the MAGA ecosystem wasn’t electoral math—it was accusation.
President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday that there was “no way this could have happened. Rigged Election!” He added in another post that “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had. 3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections!. Now they’ll be working on great guy Steve Hilton. Won’t have results for. possibly. TWO WEEKS. according to officials.” Trump’s reference to Steve Hilton points to his party’s own gubernatorial race in California. where Hilton is currently polling in second behind Democrat Xavier Becerra in the state primary.
The timing matters. California is known for slow ballot tabulation. In many states. winners are declared on Election Night even as counting continues. but California’s process—built around mail ballots and Election Day drop-offs—can take longer. with official. certified tallies often arriving weeks later. The right’s argument. as applied to Pratt’s collapse. is that in a fast-moving national media cycle. slow results become an opening to claim the outcome is being engineered.
In the same logic, Republicans and Pratt himself treated the movement of votes as suspicious. Pratt’s drop to third is being cast as “shenanigans,” particularly in a state that is deeply blue and where late mail-in and drop-off voters tend to lean heavily Democratic.
Pratt wasn’t trying to calm the matter. On Sunday night, he posted on X: “A net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday,” adding, “43,000, huh?. Where have I seen that number before. ” along with a screenshot of a news article stating there are approximately 43. 000 homeless people in Los Angeles on any given night. It’s unclear what Pratt is suggesting with that comparison. and the homeless—whether or not they are part of the city’s most visible problems—would still have the right to vote if they meet the legal requirements.
Elon Musk. who poured millions into Trump’s 2024 campaign. also amplified doubts about the legitimacy of the counting process even though the mayoral race has not been officially called for Raman. Musk posted that “The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to enable large-scale fraud. When you combine no ID and mail-in voting. fraud is de facto legalized.” But voter ID is not “banned” in California. The state asks first-time voters to verify their identity through an array of official state identification cards or proof of residency. There is also no widespread evidence of systemic voter fraud in any state of federal election.
Other figures in the right-wing orbit mirrored that push for a story that goes beyond ballots. Right-wing content creator Benny Johnson wrote that “after 5 days of statistically impossible ballot drops. Nithya Raman has pulled ahead of Spencer Pratt. The DOJ needs to keep investigating. This can’t be allowed to keep happening in America. California’s third world ‘election systems’ need to be banned.” Andrew Kolvet. spokesman for Turning Point USA. described Raman as a “woman with absolutely zero following. no groundswell of support. and no name ID [who] absolutely killed it in mail-in voting in Los Angeles.” Kolvet added a jab at the optics of the situation. saying. “Free PSA: If you don’t want us to assume cheating. maybe make it a little less obvious.”.
Underneath the claims is a familiar contradiction. Trump and allies have long insisted the 2020 presidential election was rigged. a claim widely rejected and contradicted by the outcome itself. The pattern has carried into subsequent disputes, with fraud allegations appearing even when the election process is still unfolding.
Trump also stormed out of an interview with NBC’s Meet The Press over the weekend after anchor Kristen Welker pressed him to provide evidence for his claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him. The posture has helped normalize the move from uncertainty during counting to certainty about wrongdoing.
In Los Angeles, the underlying stakes are more immediate than the rhetoric. Raman has been a figure in city politics since 2019 and is described here as a well-known campaigner within her city. Bass. meanwhile. remains the incumbent. and the runoff outcome now looks more likely to bring voters a different kind of challenge than many believed Pratt would offer.
Pratt’s elimination would mean the story of the mayoral race stops being about whether an incumbent won a clean sweep and becomes about how two challengers pulled substantial support away from Mayor Karen Bass. It would also suggest Bass may face a more left-leaning fight from a city councilmember rather than a virtually guaranteed general-election path for Pratt.
At the center of the MAGA reaction is a question that keeps repeating across elections: when the numbers don’t go their way quickly enough. how fast does scrutiny become accusation?. In this case. it’s happening while ballots are still being counted—and while California’s system. built around mail and drop-off voting. has long been known for taking its time.
Los Angeles mayoral primary Spencer Pratt Karen Bass Nithya Raman MAGA Truth Social Donald Trump Elon Musk voter ID in California open primary