UPDATE: This article was updated to reflect the newest round of ballots, which were counted on the evening of June 7.
Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman has overtaken Spencer Pratt in the race for L.A.’s next mayor. After trailing the Republican and former reality star in a distant third, Raman leapfrogged Pratt for second place after the latest round of ballots was counted on Sunday afternoon.
Raman slowly gained on Pratt over the last week and now has a slim lead. Raman, a progressive Democrat, has 27.12% of the vote while Pratt has 26.69%. Incumbent Karen Bass, with 34.68% of the vote, has already earned her place in the November runoff.
Pratt has seemingly grown weary of the lengthy vote counting, which has seen his lead dwindle over the last week. On Saturday, he posted an image of Russell Crowe’s John Nash from “A Beautiful Mind” on X with the caption, “Me trying to figure out how votes get counted in LA.”
Just one day prior, Pratt posted photos of himself posing in front of Los Angeles City Hall on X with the one-word caption, “Patience.”
While Pratt, along with other conservatives, has expressed frustration with California’s slow vote processing, there are several reasons the state takes longer to ensure accuracy. One cause is mail-in voting, which is extremely popular in the Golden State. Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber reported in 2024 that roughly 13 million of the 16 million votes in the 2024 presidential election were submitted by mail.
“The reason a lot of the ballots haven’t been counted yet is because they were dropped in the mail Monday [or] Tuesday, and as long as they’re postmarked by Tuesday, they get to be counted,” Christian Grose, director of USC’s Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, told CBS News. “And a lot people in this election, especially waited until the last minute to vote because there are a lot of choices on the ballot.”
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