In race for LA mayor, second place counts. Can Raman overtake Pratt to face Bass in November?

A Los Angeles council member and a reality star are separated by about 33,000 votes in the race for a runoff spot against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in November.

Early trends show L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman making slight gains on reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, with the latest tally released Thursday evening narrowing the gap slightly.

The Associated Press has called one runoff spot for Bass.

Votes are still being counted, and the L.A. County Registrar of Voters will receive ballots postmarked by Election Day up until seven days later. Hundreds of thousands of votes remain to be counted, according to the registrar.

Where the race stands now

By Tuesday night, Pratt had collected enough votes to put him squarely in the second spot, with a substantial lead over Raman.

But by late Wednesday, Raman had gone from just over 20% of the vote on election night to a little over 22%. Pratt gained about a tenth of a percentage point to about 30%. Thursday's release put Raman at 23.42% to Pratt's 29.35%.

“I think she has a shot at catching Pratt but I think it's a long shot,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “It requires her to get a large percentage of the votes that remain to be counted.”

Raman, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is likely to benefit from the later vote tally, Yaroslavsky said.

“The later votes tend to be more Democratic and more progressive and that inures to her benefit,” Yaroslavsky said.

[Note: Katy Yaroslavsky, his daughter-in-law, is far out in front in her reelection bid for CD5.]

Why it still may not be enough

The problem for Raman is that two days ago she was about 40,000 votes behind Pratt and last night was about 38,000 votes behind Pratt, he said.

Raman needs to gain much more than 2,000 votes a day to eclipse the 38,000 vote deficit, according to Yaroslavsky.

[The Thursday release had her gaining at a higher clip.]

“She really has to get the preponderance of the votes that will be coming in in the next week or so,” he said.

Paul Mitchell, a Democratic strategist whose company tracks ballot return data, said Republicans were reflected heavily in the early returns but as the votes continue more Democrats will be represented.

However, it may not be enough to give Raman the boost she needs. He noted that Pratt is losing votes in every vote update, but not all of those votes are going to Raman. They’re split between her and Bass.

“While [Pratt] will drop every release, I'm not sure that Raman will increase fast enough to meet and surpass him,” Mitchell said.

He explained a theory that many Bass and Raman voters held onto their ballots ahead of Election Day and that many of them were likely "establishment voters," meaning they leaned toward the incumbent.

“ So I think that in the end, we might find that [Pratt] hangs on, and the reason why he hung on is because the people who were voting at the end, the Democrats, were voting more for Karen Bass,” Mitchell said.