Raman Overtakes Bass Overnight as L.A.'s Mayoral Count Turns Her Way

The councilmember led the incumbent by about 16,600 votes with an estimated 63% counted, and late ballots are expected to favor her. No winner has been projected.

By Herald Staff · Nov. 4, 2026, 8:30 AM ET

Los Angeles City Hall's white stepped tower rises above palm trees and downtown high-rises at sunrise, seen across Grand Park, where fountains spray into a shallow pink pool beside empty benches and rows of folding chairs left behind stanchions. — Ballots postmarked by Election Day count if they arrive within seven days, so the race for City Hall's top job may not be settled for days.

Los Angeles woke up Wednesday without a mayor-elect, but with a new front-runner. City Councilmember Nithya Raman overtook Mayor Karen Bass in the early hours after Election Day and led by about 16,600 votes in the latest count, 51.1% to 48.9%, according to results tracked by The Basin from the 3:11 a.m. county update. That left Raman with 377,458 votes to Bass' 360,864, with an estimated 63% of the expected vote counted.

No winner has been projected, ABC7 reported, and counting will continue for days.

How the Lead Flipped

Bass led all evening. The first returns after polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday showed her ahead by about two points, and her margin shrank with nearly every update after that. Shortly after midnight, just 2,027 votes separated the two, LAist reported. Raman pulled ahead in the 12:44 a.m. update and widened her edge in each of the next five.

That trend matters for what comes next. The ballots counted first on election night tend to come from older, more conservative voters, the group Bass needs to win by large margins, Paul Mitchell, who heads the polling data firm PDI, told the Los Angeles Times. Late-arriving ballots tend to come from the younger voters who form Raman's base. "That was probably Karen's best set of voters," Mitchell said.

NBC News' results page estimated that roughly 459,000 votes remained, and that Bass would need to win about 51.4% of them to catch Raman. Ballots postmarked by Election Day count if they arrive within seven days, according to LAist.

Two Election Night Parties

Bass told supporters at the Loews Hollywood Hotel that it "takes awhile to count the vote" and that she was confident. "I will always fight for the city that we deserve," she said, according to the Times, pointing to her record on neighborhood safety, homelessness and jobs.

Across town at the Greek Theatre plaza, Raman told a crowd that the city had stopped "being a place where we could build things, where we could open things, where we could film things." "Hopelessness can be fatal for a city," she said. "But this campaign refused to accept that."

Raman, 45, entered the race in February, weeks after publicly endorsing Bass, and finished the June primary night in third place before overtaking Spencer Pratt on the sixth day of the count. Bass, 73, won just 34% of the vote in that primary, a weak showing for an incumbent, after a term overshadowed by the 2025 Palisades fire. An October poll by UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by the Times, had the two tied at 40%.

The race drew heavy outside spending. The Los Angeles Police Protective League put at least $6 million into a committee attacking Raman, and the carpenters union put $3.8 million into a campaign against Bass, the Times reported.

Elsewhere on the Ballot

Other local contests were less suspenseful. In the race for city attorney, Marissa Roy led John McKinney 66.1% to 33.9%. Sheriff Robert Luna led former Sheriff Alex Villanueva 68.5% to 31.5% countywide. In the 3rd Council District, Tim Gaspar led Barri Worth Girvan by just 823 votes. In the 9th District, Jose Ugarte led Estuardo Mazariegos 54% to 46%, according to The Basin's tally.

All eight city measures were passing in the early count. Measure FD, a citizens' initiative for a half-cent sales tax to fund the Fire Department, had 53.6% support, and Measure TE, which would exempt homes hit by the Palisades fire from the city's ULA transfer tax, had 64%. Statewide, Democrat Xavier Becerra was quickly projected to defeat Republican Steve Hilton for governor, ABC7 reported, while Proposition 40, a one-time tax on billionaires, was trailing.

What's at Stake

Whoever wins will lead a city government with a $14 billion budget through the rebuilding after the Palisades fire, a homelessness crisis affecting more than 45,000 people and preparations for the 2028 Olympics, LAist noted. Raman has vowed to cut street homelessness in half citywide by summer 2028 and has said she would start the process of replacing LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell on Day 1, while Bass has pointed to an 11% drop in unsheltered homelessness under her watch.

Counting continues in the coming days, and results are not final until they are certified.

Original reporting by The Los Angeles Herald, drawing on vote counts tracked by The Basin and NBC News, and on the Los Angeles Times, LAist and ABC7, as linked above.