Nithya Raman widened her lead over Karen Bass on Wednesday in the Los Angeles mayor’s race — but with only a tiny four percent of the vote counted.
The Democrat Socialists of America-endorsed councilmember pulled a touch further ahead of Bass at 4pm Tuesday, as late-counted inched the ultra progressive challenger closer towards an upset over the incumbent.
The latest Los Angeles County election returns showed Raman with 405,193 votes, or 51.67%, compared with Bass’s 379,069 votes, or 48.33%, a 26,124 vote advantage that further erased the incumbent’s narrow election-night lead.
There is now 67% of the vote counted. At 3am Wednesday, Raman was at 377,458 and Bass was at 360,864, a difference of 18,205 votes, with 63% of the vote counted.
Veteran California political strategist Dan Schnur told the California Post that Raman’s strength among younger voters could make the growing deficit especially difficult for Bass to overcome.
“Nothing is definite, but given that Raman’s voters tend to vote later, their votes are going to be the last counted,” Schnur, who teaches at USC and UC Berkeley, told The Post.
“So while nothing’s guaranteed, she’s probably in a very strong and advantageous position at this point.”
The reversal echoes Raman’s June primary performance, when she overtook reality television star Spencer Pratt as additional ballots were counted, punching her ticket to the November showdown against Bass.
“Young people vote late, so their votes get counted last,” Schnur explained. “And given a system like California’s, that means we don’t see those results until well after the election.”
A Raman victory would mark a major breakthrough for the DSA-LA, which only endorsed her in September, propelling the lefty organization to the center of power in the nation’s second-biggest city.
Raman, 45, first stormed into City Hall in 2020 with DSA backing, unseating an incumbent councilman David Ryu.
She won re-election in 2024 and has established herself as a leading force in Los Angeles’ progressive movement.
But Schnur argued Raman’s rise has exposed a huge ideological divide between the generations in Los Angeles.
“It’s almost as if they were running to be mayor of two different cities,” he told The Post.
“Bass did well with 20th century Los Angeles, but Raman did well with 21st century LA.”
Raman has done well with energized younger voters frustrated with soaring housing costs and shrinking opportunities, while Bass leaned heavily on older residents and the city’s political establishment.
“Young people don’t see the kind of prospects available to them going forward their parents and grandparents saw,” Schnur said.
“Raman spoke to them in a way that an older candidate didn’t.”
Bass and political action committees backing her spent the final weeks hammering Raman as an inexperienced gamble, blasting her record on homeless encampments and her pledge to replace LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell.
The attacks coincided with a tightening race. A final UC Berkeley survey showed the candidates deadlocked at 40%, after Raman held an 11-point advantage in September.
“If Raman is elected, the overriding message from voters is that they were willing to take a risk,” Schnur told The Post.
Raman isn’t the only DSA-backed candidate on the verge of capturing a powerful City Hall office.
Marissa Roy, the socialist organization’s endorsed candidate for city attorney, has opened a commanding 223,000-vote lead over John McKinney, putting her on the brink of taking over the city’s top legal post.
The next vote tally is expected between 4 and 5 p.m. Wednesday
