Spencer Pratt’s independent bid to make the Los Angeles mayoral runoff hangs in the balance nearly a week after Election Day.
With the jungle primary leaving incumbent Democrat Mayor Karen Bass already ruled to have advanced to a November runoff, Pratt’s margin over Democrat City Councilmember Nithya Raman has slimmed to just 1% with a few thousand ballots left to make up the difference.
Pratt led Raman by just 7,494 votes in the latest AP elections tally with 78% of the vote counted to date. Bass remained in first place with 235,180 votes (34.8%), while Pratt had 184,596 votes (27.3%) and Raman had 177,102 votes (26.2%).
Los Angeles County continues to count ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received by Tuesday, June 9, drawing the attention of the Republican National Committee. The election results must only be counted within 30 days and certified by July 10.
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“The California primary ended on June 2, 2026; yet California is still counting ballots,” the RNC website tracker counting the seconds since polls closed reads.
“The state’s election system is a complete joke. The RNC is tracking every hour it takes California to finish the count.”
The latest ballot update gave Raman another boost, as she picked up 23,514 votes in the latest batch, more than double Pratt’s 10,336-vote gain. That cut Pratt’s lead by 13,178 votes in a single day and pushed the contest for second place into uncertain territory.
Pratt posted a meme to X decrying the ongoing ballot count in the race.
“Me trying to figure out how votes get counted in LA,” he wrote Saturday night.
Under California’s top-two primary system, if no candidate wins more than 50% of the votes, the two highest vote-getters advance to the general election. The AP reported that Bass advanced to the runoff after finishing first in the crowded mayoral primary, while Pratt and Raman continued battling for the remaining November spot.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., pointed to California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom when discussing the delayed results.
“The question to the rest of the world is what happened to California elections? Well, I’ll tell you, it’s Gavin Newsom,” McCarthy told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “When Gavin Newsom was elected governor of California, you knew who was elected in a day to two days. Now it takes more than weeks, almost a month.”
“Why did we get here?” McCarthy continued. “Gavin changed a number of election laws in which you want to see is what did he do and why did he cause it?”
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The slow count has drawn heightened attention because later-counted ballots have steadily cut into Pratt’s lead.
Longtime Democrat strategist Michael Trujillo told The California Post on Saturday that the trend pointed to a likely runoff appearance for Raman, calling the late ballot counting “normal” for California and telling critics to “go back to where you came from.”
“I was always a little jealous of east coast elections getting so much attention in the media and on this app, yeah nevermind,” he wrote on X. “The stupidity from these out of state analysts and reporters and the bots and fake accounts it brings to what is really a very NORMAL process happening in Los Angeles and California is annoying.
“Go back to where you came from, thanks.”
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Conservatives on X are decrying the probability of Pratt being shut out of the runoff.
“Spencer Pratt is likely going to be overtaken by far left Nithya Raman today,” Robby Starbuck wrote on X. “This graph shows the count on Election Day through last night. “Nithya did this by suddenly winning 1st in every new ballot drop.
“North Korean ‘elections’ have more self respect. Even they’d find it absurd for 3rd to suddenly jump to 1st place in every ballot drop DAYS after an election. It’s just ludicrous.”
That post also brought the attention of X owner Elon Musk.
“The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to enable large-scale fraud,” Musk claimed on X, replying to Starbuck’s post. “When you combine no ID and mail-in voting, fraud is de facto legalized.”
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Starbuck noted the historic run Raman’s count has made.
“ChatGPT can’t find a single example of a 3rd place candidate surging, days AFTER Election Day, to overtake 2nd place,” he wrote Sunday morning. “It couldn’t find 1 example in all of American history. That’s what’s happening with Nithya Raman & Spencer Pratt.
“Los Angeles has 3rd world country elections.”
Democrats merely point back to an overwhelming edge in registered Democrat voters versus Republicans, even if Pratt is running as an independent.
“IF SOMETHING CAN BE EXPLAINED BY A CONVOLUTED CONSPIRACY THEORY—OR SIMPLE MATH—THEN MATH ALWAYS WINS,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., wrote on X. “LA Registered Voters. Approximate number of Dems: 1,224,737 Approximate number of Republicans: 326,292.”
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Americans “want to see election integrity,” McCarthy told host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
“They want to see transparency and they want to see timely reporting: We had that in California,” McCarthy, a former Republican House member in the deep-blue state, said. “We were very liberal in the rules about absentee ballots, but we had accountability.”
“We had cut off voter registration 30 days before the election. That helps the registrars to know who’s going to vote and the candidates,” he continued. “Now we have same day voter, and you don’t have to show ID. Gavin changed the rules where he mails ballots to everyone. So he took away the choice to Californians to vote in person or to vote absentee. Everybody gets mailed a ballot. But he didn’t clean up the rolls. So that raises doubt in people’s minds.”
McCarthy noted Raman’s Election Night disappointment was originally telling.
“When you look at the LA mayor’s race, the third place person gave it like a concession speech that night and cried, and she was getting the most votes in the last drop,” McCarthy said. “So if she didn’t even believe that she could move up, that puts in question to the whole election itself. And that’s why it brings doubt to people.”
President Donald Trump had weighed in, too, with the RNC pointing to the pending Watson v. RNC Supreme Court decision on late ballot counting due soon.
The Watson decision might come before the end of June.
“.@POTUS is right,” the RNC’s Election Integrity unit posted on X. “That’s why the RNC has boots on the ground and is fighting in the Supreme Court to stop ballots received after Election Day from being counted. MAKE ELECTIONS SECURE AGAIN!”
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