With only about 77.7% of expected votes counted, Spencer Pratt still leads Nithya Raman in the Los Angeles mayor race on Saturday, June 6—but the gap has narrowed sharply. Karen Bass has already advanced to the November runoff.
Spencer Pratt walked into the vote count still in front—but by Saturday, June 6, the distance between him and Nithya Raman had shrunk to something much harder to ignore.
In the latest update, Pratt remained ahead while the race stayed tight. He was at 27.3% of the votes, while Raman was at 26.2%. The difference wasn’t just percentages either: Raman had 177k votes to Pratt’s 184k.
Only about 77.7% of the expected votes have been counted so far. leaving plenty of room for the totals to shift as additional mail-in ballots are tallied. There’s currently no expected date for when the final count will be revealed. and the timeline could stretch—just as it did in the 2022 election. where results took a week of counting.
Karen Bass, the incumbent mayor, already secured her place in the November runoff election. Her count stands at 34.8% with 235k votes.
The structure of the election makes every tenth of a percentage matter. To win the mayoral seat outright, a candidate would need at least 50% of the vote from Tuesday’s election. If no one reaches that threshold, the top two candidates will face off in November’s general election.
At the moment, it does not look like any single candidate will reach 50%.
By the math of the race, Bass is guaranteed a spot in the runoff, but the question now is who will join her—Pratt or Raman.
A Democratic consultant, Michael Trujillo, who does not represent any of the candidates, predicted a late shift toward Raman. He told the LA Times, “I think it’s over,” adding, “It appears Nithya will be in the runoff. Pratt doesn’t appear to be growing much more.”
As the mail-in ballots continue to come in and the gap narrows, Pratt’s task becomes clear: he can’t just stay ahead—he has to start pulling away before the remaining votes are counted and the November matchup locks in.
Spencer Pratt Nithya Raman Los Angeles mayor race Karen Bass runoff election mail-in ballots LA Times vote count