The final matchup for the Los Angeles mayoral runoff remains unsettled, but precinct-level returns show the contours of the race. The incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, secured one of the two spots in the November election, but Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman are battling for second.
The results on the map reflect the nearly 500,000 votes that were tabulated on election night, which include early and mail-in votes that were returned early and ballots cast in-person on Election Day. Election officials are still in the process of counting hundreds of thousands of ballots in the race, and high-level updates will continue to be reported each day through at least June 12. But updated precinct-level data is not expected to be released until the end of June.
That means these results reflect voters who participated earlier in the process. On Wednesday and Thursday, as ballots that arrived later began being processed, the updated results were more favorable to the Democrats than they were to Mr. Pratt, who lost some of his edge over Ms. Raman.
Even so, the incomplete results highlight the socioeconomic fault lines that have divided the city in this election and the coalitions that each candidate has built:
Karen Bass
Ms. Bass leads handily in the Black, Latino and white liberal strongholds that underpinned her 2022 election.
Three areas of support in particular stand out for her: South Los Angeles, where she got her start as a grassroots activist during the crack cocaine epidemic; East Los Angeles and the East Valley, where organized labor routinely turns out Latino voters; and bastions of older white Democrats, like Mar Vista, which were part of her district when she served in Congress.
Wealthy precincts like Pacific Palisades, which was ravaged by wildfire last year, spurned her, but the Palisades also overwhelmingly opposed her in 2022.
Spencer Pratt
Mr. Pratt has done well so far in the most affluent parts of the city, including Pacific Palisades, where he grew up and where his family’s home burned down in the fires last year.
As a registered Republican, he also did well in pockets of MAGA conservatism like the Sunland-Tujunga area in the far northeast San Fernando Valley.
He won over some Jewish communities on the city’s Westside with direct appeals to pro-Israel voters and also did well in expatriate Iranian-American hubs like Tehrangeles in Westwood.
Nithya Raman
Ms. Raman, who was elected to the City Council in 2020 with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, has maintained her urban progressive base in places like Echo Park and Silver Lake, where she lives.
Her focus on affordability and her public policy expertise yielded support in dense neighborhoods with lots of cash-strapped, educated renters, like Los Feliz.
She has also done well in precincts around college campuses like Occidental College and the University of Southern California.
Of course, these results will change as the rest of the ballots are tallied over the next few weeks. Election officials have not provided an estimate of how many ballots remain uncounted specifically in the Los Angeles mayoral race, but countywide figures suggest that a substantial share of the vote is still outstanding.
As of Wednesday night, Los Angeles County had reported 1.3 million ballots counted and estimated that roughly 700,000 ballots remained, with more still arriving. Late mail-in ballots have been more favorable to the Democrats this cycle, so the final results may move toward Ms. Bass and Ms. Raman at even higher rates than they did for Ms. Bass in the 2022 primary.
Rick Caruso, a centrist Democrat and former Republican, led on election night in 2022, but Ms. Bass steadily gained ground over the following weeks. She ultimately overtook him, winning the primary with 43 percent of the vote to Mr. Caruso’s 36 percent.
