Los Angeles mayor’s race for second place stays unsettled as ballots remain to be counted

Hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles ballots still remained to be processed, keeping the race for second place behind Mayor Karen Bass unsettled even as early returns showed Nithya Raman trailing Spencer Pratt. Under California’s top-two system, only the top two vote-getters advance to the November runoff, and Bass has already secured one of those spots.

Los Angeles County estimated 713,180 ballots were still outstanding after the June 2 primary. About 700,000 of them were vote-by-mail ballots, with 11,340 conditional voter registration ballots and 1,840 provisional ballots still in the queue. County officials said ballots postmarked by Election Day and received through June 9 could still be counted, meaning the final shape of the race could change as late-arriving envelopes are opened and verified during the official canvass period.

The county’s first post-election update on June 3 said 77,521 ballots had been processed since Election Night, bringing the total count to 1,395,987 ballots, or 23.69% of registered voters. A later county results update put turnout at 1,477,473 voters, or 25.08%, out of 5,891,851 registered voters. County officials have said voting by mail remains the most popular method in Los Angeles County, underscoring how much of the electorate is still represented in the stack of ballots yet to be counted.

That unfinished count matters most in the contest for the second runoff slot. Bass, elected in 2022, is already set for November, while the fight below her has drawn unusual attention because Pratt is a celebrity candidate and the field included 13 challengers. Pratt, a former reality television personality and registered Republican, entered the race after his Pacific Palisades home burned in the 2025 Palisades Fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of structures. He has centered his campaign on corruption, homelessness, public safety and rebuilding the Palisades.

Raman, a Los Angeles City Council member and former Bass ally, has tried to present herself as the progressive alternative. Her campaign has emphasized housing, homelessness and the city’s broader policy response, while also arguing that opponents and outside forces have mounted a coordinated effort against her. If the current margins hold, the race would mark the first time in 21 years that a sitting Los Angeles mayor has been forced into a general-election runoff after a single term in office, a reminder that early Election Night narratives in Los Angeles can be overturned by the ballots still moving through the county’s long count.