Karen Bass and Nithya Raman were locked in a dead heat in the Los Angeles mayoral race — as political veterans warned the race could drag on for days or even weeks.
As of 10 p.m. Tuesday, Bass had 50.86% of the vote to Raman’s 49.14%, with just 9,941 votes separating the two out of the 575,811 counted.
Veteran pollster John McLaughlin and longtime political consultant Rick Taylor told the California Post that the tight margin with thousands of ballots still to be processed could leave Angelenos waiting several days for a clearer picture 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 it could take several weeks to count mail-in ballots.
“It’s how the system is set up.”
The county’s ballot-counting schedule calls for updates at 4 p.m. Wednesday after the elections followed by 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. updates each day after, with election workers processing ballots around the clock.
Final results are not scheduled to be certified until Nov. 27.
Despite the uncertainty, Bass struck a confident tone at her election-night party at the Loews Hotel on Tuesday night, rallying supporters around 9:45 p.m. and urging patience as ballots continued to be counted. She also took aim at President Trump, blasting his immigration crackdown and deployment of federal troops into Los Angeles.
“Our city stood together,” Bass said.
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But the embattled incumbent stopped short of claiming 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 nail-biting contest followed a surge in countywide voting, with roughly 1.9 million ballots cast by 1:15 p.m. Tuesday, including 1.5 million by mail and nearly 400,000 in person, according to Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan.
That represented approximately 32% of registered voters, already surpassing the 28% turnout Logan reported for the 2022 gubernatorial election.
“People are getting out and voting, and they’re returning their ballots,” McLaughlin, whose firm conducted The Post’s October mayoral poll, said. “It says that the issues are important and people are involved.”
But the biggest question hanging over the race is whose voters showed up, and whose ballots have yet to be counted.
Taylor told The Post that Latino ballot returns in LA jumped from approximately 117,000 Monday to 167,000 Tuesday, with older voters accounting for a significant share, a trend he believes could benefit Bass.
Younger voters, a critical part of Raman’s coalition, had not shown a comparable surge.
“LA, it hasn’t popped yet,” Taylor told The Post, cautioning that ballots dropped off late Tuesday could take days to enter the count.
That leaves both campaigns facing an agonizing wait as late-arriving mail ballots, provisional votes and ballots requiring additional verification threaten to reshape the 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.”
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