Karen Bass holds an 11.8-point lead over Nithya Raman in the Los Angeles mayoral runoff, according to a new poll, and much of that edge appears to be coming from an unlikely place: voters who backed eliminated third-place candidate Spencer Pratt in June. The survey found Bass leading Raman 50.2% to 38.4% among likely runoff voters, putting the incumbent mayor just over the threshold needed to win outright if the numbers hold on Election Day.
The poll, conducted by Median Strategies and first reported by the New York Post, surveyed 560 voters from July 30 through August 5 and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Among voters who supported Pratt in the primary, 85.2% now say they back Bass, compared with just 6.8% who favor Raman, while 8% remain undecided. Pratt, the reality-TV personality and former Hollywood Hills reality star, was eliminated in the June primary after pulling roughly 26% of the vote, but the poll suggests his coalition still carries real weight in the runoff.
Bass's Lead Varies Sharply by Region
The Post's polling breakdown shows Bass's advantage is not uniform across the city. She leads Raman 55.7% to 33.9% in South LA and 53.9% to 37.1% in the San Fernando Valley, according to the survey. But Raman actually edges ahead 45.8% to 44.6% in the Eastside and Northeast LA, while the two candidates are essentially deadlocked at 38.8% each in the Harbor/South Bay region, which also has the highest share of undecided voters in the race at 22.4%. Statewide within the city, 64 surveyed voters remain undecided ahead of the November election.
The poll suggests that most Pratt voters view Bass as the more moderate option between the two runoff candidates. Pratt's platform was rooted in his own experience losing his Pacific Palisades home in the January 2025 wildfire, which led him and wife Heidi Montag to sue the City of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power over the disaster, according to Fox News Digital. In June, Pratt aligned himself with Mayor Bass's own brother, Kenneth Bass, who joined similar litigation against the city over fire losses.
Raman Loses Committee Post Amid Council Friction
The polling news lands just days after Raman suffered a setback inside City Hall. The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-1 on August 11 to approve a restructuring motion dissolving the Housing and Homelessness Committee, stripping Raman of her chairmanship effective August 31, according to MyNewsLA. Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson introduced the motion.
Democratic Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who served on the dissolved committee, was blunt about her assessment of Raman's leadership. Padilla told colleagues, per CityWatch LA, that “the months that I served on that committee under your leadership were the most unproductive time I've had on council,” and alleged Raman left more than 100 homelessness-related motions unscheduled during her tenure. Padilla said Raman was removed because of her inability to lead and get things done.
Boyle Heights Fire Cleanup Still Unresolved
Homelessness policy has been a central flashpoint of the race, and so has the city's handling of the massive Boyle Heights warehouse fire. The June 17 blaze at a Lineage Logistics cold-storage facility destroyed roughly 88 million pounds of frozen food, burned for eight days, and triggered a biohazard emergency order, as detailed by LAist. Councilmember Ysabel Jurado reported on August 13 that Lineage would miss Mayor Bass's 45-day executive order deadline to fully clear the rotting food from the site, having reached 93% by the deadline, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Bass delivered a speech at Stevenson Middle School on July 9 addressing recovery from the fire and spoke earlier at a June 21 press conference on the warehouse situation in Boyle Heights. Raman has used the fire's aftermath as a line of attack against the mayor, as Hoodline previously reported. Raman also held a press conference in Studio City on July 24 after the city's homeless count showed more people living on the street.
Raman's Homelessness Critique and Labor Backing
Raman has built much of her campaign around criticizing Bass's signature homelessness program. In April, she unveiled a mayoral blueprint targeting Inside Safe, citing figures showing motel stays under the initiative cost more than $225 per night per bed compared with $86 per night for alternative shelter options, per LAist. Inside Safe launched via executive order in December 2022.
Raman has also picked up organized labor support even as she struggles elsewhere. On August 4, the Southwest Mountain States Regional Council of Carpenters shifted its endorsement from Bass to Raman, a defection Hoodline covered in a report on the union switch. That came months after progressive councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado, and Hugo Soto-Martínez endorsed Bass over Raman in May, citing the mayor's crisis leadership, exposing a split within the council's own left flank.
Pratt Pivots to National Conservative Stage
Pratt, meanwhile, appears to be moving on from Los Angeles politics entirely. Following his primary elimination, he was booked as the headlining speaker for the Warren County Republican Party's Red Wave Rally scheduled for September 19 in Ohio, according to the Warren County GOP. During the primary, Pratt met with African American and Latino voters at Tim Gilliam Park in an effort to broaden his coalition beyond the base that ultimately elevated him to national conservative media attention.
Whether that base sticks with Bass through November remains the open question shaping the runoff's final stretch. With undecided voters concentrated in swing regions like the Harbor/South Bay, and with Raman fighting both a diminished council role and a homelessness-spending message that hasn't yet closed the polling gap, the fate of Pratt's roughly quarter of the primary electorate could ultimately determine who becomes Los Angeles's next mayor.
