Exclusive | Mayor Karen Bass and Nithya Raman in dead heat as voters face excruciating wait in LA mayoral race

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass clung to a razor-thin lead over challenger Nithya Raman Tuesday night, with fewer than 10,000 votes separating the candidates as political veterans warned the bitter mayoral showdown could drag on for days, or even weeks.

As of 10 p.m., Bass held 50.86% of the vote, with 292,876 ballots, compared with Raman’s 49.14%, or 282,935 votes, a difference of just 9,941 votes out of 575,811 counted.

Veteran pollster John McLaughlin and longtime political consultant Rick Taylor told The California Post that the tight margin and thousands of ballots still to be processed could leave Angelenos waiting until at least Friday 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.

The county’s ballot-counting schedule calls for updates at 4 p.m. Wednesday after the elections then a 9:00 a.m. and 4 p.m. update every 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, rallying supporters around 9:45 p.m. and urging patience as ballots continued to be counted. She also took aim at President Donald Trump, blasting his immigration crackdown and deployment of federal troops into Los Angeles.

“Our city stood together,” Bass said.

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 said. “We will achieve victory.”

Raman also urged supporters to remain patient Tuesday night.

“There are still a lot of ballots to count, and we’re gonna let that count finish,” Raman told supporters. “I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful.”

Raman stopped short of declaring victory but celebrated the campaign she had built, casting her challenge to Bass as part of a broader demand for change.

“Here in Los Angeles, this election is about change, too,” Raman said.

“But this campaign refused to accept that. You refused to accept that. You saw hopelessness, and you chose hope,” she told supporters.

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 survey, told The Post. “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 Los Angeles 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.

“Not in LA. It’s funny. 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 Los Angeles 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 before 2030. 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.”