Karen Bass and Nithya Raman remained locked in an extremely tight Los Angeles mayoral race Tuesday night, with political veterans cautioning that the final outcome could take days — or even weeks — to emerge.
By 10 p.m. Tuesday, Bass held 50.86% of the vote compared with 49.14% for Raman. Just 9,941 votes separated the candidates among the 575,811 ballots counted so far.
Veteran pollster John McLaughlin and longtime political consultant Rick Taylor told the California Post that the narrow margin, combined with thousands of outstanding ballots, could leave Los Angeles voters waiting several days for a clearer indication of who will lead America’s second-largest city.
“If there is one thing we can predict, it’s that we won’t know what the outcome of the elections will be until the earliest Friday,” Taylor told The Post, warning that the counting of mail-in ballots could take several weeks.
“It’s how the system is set up.”
Los Angeles County’s ballot-counting schedule calls for the next update at 4 p.m. Wednesday, followed by reports at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. each day thereafter. Election workers are processing ballots around the clock.
The county is not scheduled to certify the final results until Nov. 27.
Despite the uncertainty, Bass projected confidence at her election-night party at the Loews Hotel. Speaking to supporters at about 9:45 p.m., she urged patience while the remaining ballots were counted and criticized President Trump over his immigration crackdown and the deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles.
“Our city stood together,” Bass said.
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The embattled incumbent, however, stopped short of declaring victory.
“As we are waiting for the votes to be counted, there is one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty,” Bass told supporters. “I have never been more proud of our city.”
“Pretty soon we should know,” she added. “We will achieve victory.”
The razor-thin contest came amid a surge in countywide voting. About 1.9 million ballots had been cast by 1:15 p.m. Tuesday, including 1.5 million submitted by mail and nearly 400,000 cast in person, according to Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan.
The total represented roughly 32% of registered voters, surpassing the 28% turnout Logan reported during the 2022 gubernatorial election.
“People are getting out and voting, and they’re returning their ballots,” said McLaughlin, whose firm conducted The Post’s October poll of the mayoral race. “It says that the issues are important and people are involved.”
The central unanswered question, however, is which candidate’s supporters turned out — and whose ballots remain to be counted.
Taylor told The Post that Latino ballot returns in Los Angeles rose from about 117,000 Monday to 167,000 Tuesday. Older voters made up a significant portion of that increase, a pattern Taylor said could favor Bass.
Younger voters, who form an important part of Raman’s coalition, had not produced a similar late surge.
“LA, it hasn’t popped yet,” Taylor told The Post, noting that ballots dropped off late Tuesday could take several days to be added to the count.
Both campaigns now face an agonizing wait as late-arriving mail ballots, provisional votes and ballots requiring additional verification could still alter the direction of the Los Angeles mayoral race.
California law allows mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive within seven days, potentially extending the suspense well beyond Friday.
At stake is the future of a city grappling with 45,194 homeless residents, a shrinking police force and soaring housing costs as Los Angeles races to prepare for the 2028 Olympics.
The Post’s October poll exposed deep dissatisfaction with City Hall, with 66.2% of likely voters declaring LA was headed in the wrong direction and just 25.5% approving of Bass’s job performance.
Bass campaigned on defending her signature Inside Safe homelessness program, rebuilding the LAPD to 9,500 officers by the Olympics and continuing efforts to tackle the city’s housing crisis.
Raman pushed for greater accountability over homelessness spending and vowed to replace LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell. But her repeated votes against restrictions on homeless encampments and ties to the Democratic Socialists of America became major flashpoints in the bruising campaign.
Political analyst Dan Schnur, who teaches at USC and UC Berkeley, told The Post the candidates offered voters starkly different visions of Los Angeles , a divide reflected in the extraordinarily close returns.
“The two candidates seem to have been running for mayor of two entirely different cities of Los Angeles,” Schnur said.
“They’re talking to different voters, they’re prioritizing different goals, and they’re thinking about the city’s future in two entirely different ways.”