LA Mayor Race: Raman Passes Pratt in Quest for Second-Place Slot

Where the race stands now

On election night, Pratt had collected enough votes to put him squarely in the second spot, with a significant lead over Raman.

But by late Friday, Raman had gone from just over 20% of the vote on election night to about 25%. Meanwhile, Pratt lost a couple of percentage points since Tuesday night’s early returns. Thursday’s release put Raman at 24.89% to Pratt’s 28.24%.

And by Sunday, Raman passed Pratt — with 27.12% of the votes to Pratt’s 26.69%.

It’s a development some election watchers predicted.

“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, last week. “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 there were some doubts

On Tuesday night, Raman was about 40,000 votes behind Pratt, and on Wednesday night, she was about 38,000 votes behind Pratt, Yaroslavsky said.

He predicted she needed to gain much more than 2,000 votes a day to eclipse the 38,000 vote deficit.

“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 vote counts continue, more Democrats will be represented..

Whether that would be enough to give Raman the boost she needs is still up for question, Mitchell said last week. He noted that Pratt was 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.

What’s next?

L.A. County election officials said they plan to release new vote count results every day until June 12, and regular updates until June 26.

The county’s final official results must be certified by July 2.