Brand new polling data has revealed that the Los Angeles mayoral race has become a true nail-biter as margins between the three major candidates are now razor-thin with less than a week before Election Day. Conservatives are hopeful that GOP candidate and former reality television star Spencer Pratt might actually beat out Democratic Party candidates to become the next mayor of one of the most notoriously left-wing cities in the country.
Radical leftist Councilwoman Nithya Raman and incumbent Mayor Karen Bass are only separated by a single point, with the Democratic Socialist of America-linked Raman picking up significant support and sitting at 25%. Bass, whose campaign has stalled a bit since the previous poll, is sitting at 26%, according to data from a UC Berkeley Los Angeles Times poll that was released on May 28, 2026.
Pratt isn’t too far behind, coming in at 22% among likely voters as he continues to gain traction after announcing his campaign following the loss of his home in the Palisades Fire in January 2025. Both Raman and Pratt got a significant boost in momentum with each leaping eight percentage points since March, while Bass has basically gone nowhere.
According to a report from The New York Post, the previous poll showed Bass with a significant advantage over her competition, which means the latest data is a major shift in how voters are now assessing her performance in office. However, analysts still think she’s going to easily slide into the November runoff later this year.
Matt Klink, a longtime L.A. political consultant, stated that the poll showed the race is still highly volatile heading into the last days before the election. “Berkeley IGS has generally been reliable in California and in the last L.A. mayor’s race, but this poll is not telling us who wins. It highlights a race that is still very much up for grabs. It tells us the incumbent, Mayor Bass, has lost altitude,” he said in an interview with the Post.
”Nithya Raman has some momentum and Spencer Pratt has consolidated a protest lane. The November runoff will be determined by which constituency actually votes,” Klink continued. Other pollsters described the contest as essentially being neck-and-neck, with all three of the candidates falling within the margin of error.
Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS poll, went on to say that voter turnout would be the deciding factor for which candidates will move forward. The report also noted that while both Bass and Pratt have high unfavorability ratings, Raman is the only one of the three who has a net-positive rating. A total of 57% of likely voters had an unfavorable view of Bass, which is up slightly from the numbers in March.
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Pratt also has a 57% unfavorability rating among likely voters, a sharp increase from 28% in the previous poll when over half of those surveyed said they had no opinion of him. Only 35% of likely voters viewed Bass favorably in the latest poll, compared to Pratt’s 25%. Raman received a favorability rating of 40%. The one thing Pratt has working in his favor is an endorsement from President Donald Trump, which has proven worth its weight in gold for other candidates across the country.
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