Late Ballot Dumps May Just Put Socialist Over Republican Days After Election

The likelihood of Socialist Democrat Nithya Raman being elected Los Angeles’s next mayor is surging following multiple late-breaking ballot dumps nearly a week after polls closed and despite having trailed Republican Spencer Pratt by ten points on Election Day.

The Indian-born Los Angeles city councilwoman who entered the race in February sits in third place at the time of writing Saturday night. She is just one percentage point behind Pratt, a former reality star with whom she is competing for the second spot in November’s runoff election, according to The Associated Press (AP). With 78% of ballots counted, incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass has 34.6% of the vote, Pratt has 27.3%, and Raman has 26.2%.

While AP has already projected Bass will advance to the November runoff, it is unclear if she will face the challenger from her left or from her right.

Securing 46% of the vote as of election night, Pratt had a ten-point lead over Raman: his 30.1% compared to her 20.2%, according to AP. This gap shrank to seven points just hours later; the following day, 63% of the vote was counted. By Thursday, when 71% of the vote was counted, Pratt was leading the socialist by only four points.

“Raman needed to beat Pratt by 8.7 points in the remaining vote today. Instead, she won this drop by 22.5 points, and it was a large batch,” VoteHub head of data science Zachary Donnini wrote late Saturday on X. “That puts Nithya Raman on track to join Karen Bass in a November runoff between two Democrats.”

Raman needed to beat Pratt by 8.7 points in the remaining vote today. Instead, she won this drop by 22.5 points, and it was a large batch.

That puts Nithya Raman on track to join Karen Bass in a November runoff between two Democrats. https://t.co/9YF7JCEjIW

— Zachary Donnini (@ZacharyDonnini) June 7, 2026

Media strategist and Mobile Dev Memo founder Eric Seufert wrote on X that Friday night’s drop of just under 60,000 ballots split 39% for Raman, 34% for Bass, and only 18% for Pratt. He added that this batch of ballots “was the largest outside of the initial election-night drop” and “the first in which Raman took the largest share.”

Raman chairs the Council of the District of Columbia’s Housing and Homelessness Committee and notably led opposition to an ordinance, supported by Bass, which would have cleaned out a homeless encampment in an area citizens have witnessed murders. The ordinance still overwhelmingly passed, with the socialist casting one of the four dissenting votes on the Council.

Pratt, who starred in the 2000’s MTV reality series “The Hills,” lost his home in the Palisades Fire in January 2025. Bass’s response to the devastating fire was widely panned across the political spectrum.

In the days before the race, the former reality star appears to have underestimated the socialist’s support by focusing his energy on Bass, who he had extensively criticized throughout the campaign.

During a May 28 appearance on Fox News — the Thursday before Election Day — Pratt called Raman “irrelevant,” citing her falling support in prediction markets.

“After the debate [on] the betting apps she went from 65% to— I think she’s at 5%. She’s so irrelevant I think we should just focus on Bass,” he said on “Fox & Friends.”

Due to Los Angeles’s strong Democratic lean, Pratt would be a heavy underdog against Bass if he manages to make the runoff election. A head-to-head matchup between Bass and Raman would likely be harder to predict due to both the candidates being Democrats.

If Raman manages to edge out Pratt and unseat the incumbent mayor in November, Los Angeles would join the other two of the U.S.’s three largest cities in choosing an avowed leftist mayor over a more moderate Democrat. In 2025, now-New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani defeated former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in both the primary and general elections. Two years earlier, left-leaning Mayor Brandon Johnson bested the more moderate Paul Vallas in Chicago’s mayoral election.