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Outcomes in California’s two most closely watched primaries for governor and Los Angeles mayor remained unresolved Sunday morning, but the latest results saw the mayoral race tighten significantly as voters await who will advance to the November election in both key races.
Political newcomer Spencer Pratt’s lead over L.A. City Councilwoman Nithya Raman in the race for mayor has continued to diminish since election night, with a narrow 1% margin separating the two as of Saturday evening’s latest update from the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder. Incumbent L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was already projected earlier this week to advance to the runoff, where she will face either Raman or Pratt.
The waiting game also isn’t over after California’s chaotic primary to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, which took a big step forward Friday, with CBS News projecting that former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, had advanced to the general election.
County election offices across the state released their latest results late Friday afternoon, launching Becerra to victory and shifting the focus to who would challenge the former California attorney general to become the state’s next chief executive.
Under California’s top-two primary system, the two candidates with the most votes will advance to November’s general election, regardless of party affiliation.
If elected, Becerra would become the first Latino governor of California in 150 years since Republican Romualdo Pacheco in 1875.
Hilton in lead for second spot in gubernatorial election
Before Becerra advanced on Friday to the general election, Republican challenger Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, had been the leading candidate in the race since polls closed on Tuesday. Becerra remained in second place before gaining enough votes to overtake Hilton in the latest results released by election officials.
Hilton is now battling for the second spot on the November ballot, with billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, a Democrat, in third place. While Steyer gained some ground in the latest returns, election experts including Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc. said a second-place finish could prove elusive for the 2020 presidential candidate.
“The challenge there is that with these late voters, Hilton actually seems to be doing pretty well,” Mitchell said Thursday.
Throughout the week, Hilton has continued to position himself as the change candidate in the race and criticized the pace of California’s ballot counting, suggesting he would enact a major overhaul of the state’s election process if elected governor.
“We’re not there yet, but it’s looking good,” Hilton said Tuesday night. “It looks very much like Californians really will have the chance to vote for change in November and take our state in a new direction.”
Pratt’s lead over Raman erodes in LA mayoral race
Bass is still waiting to learn who she will face in the November election as reality TV star Pratt’s considerable lead over Raman continued to shrink late Saturday.
After holding a nearly 6% lead over Raman on Thursday, Pratt’s advantage over the councilwoman narrowed even further following the release of L.A. County’s latest ballot count on Saturday, with Pratt up 27.3% to 26.2% for Ramen with 78% of the votes counted.
“Spencer Pratt has been losing share of the vote with every one of these new ballot dumps, and we expect that to continue,” Mitchell said on Thursday. “The question is, will he drop? Will Nithya Raman rise? And at some point, will there be an inflection point where Nithya Raman would take over that second spot?”
After polls closed on Tuesday, Pratt appeared confident that he was going to face Bass in November, saying that the incumbent was “not a candidate that I’m too concerned about.”
“I’m ready for whatever god puts in front of me,” Pratt said. “Obviously, I was going to accept whatever god’s plan was tonight. I was going to be happy if I wasn’t moving forward because I would’ve known god didn’t want me to be the mayor. Now, I feel very confident.”
Leading up to Election Day, analysts predicted that the race would be tight with the trio virtually tied. According to a May 28 UC Berkeley-LA Times poll, which cited a margin of error of around 3%, Bass had the most support from likely voters at 26%, Raman was close behind at 25% and Pratt came in third at 22%.
As the last candidate to announce her bid, Raman spoke to supporters after polls closed on Election Day about what she called her “long shot” bid for mayor.
“No one knew who I was; I was the last to enter this race,” Raman said. “We had no institutional backing. But what we did have was a vision for Los Angeles.”
When will more California primary election results be released?
According to the California Secretary of State, counties have 30 days to count ballots on a provisional basis. Mail-in votes must be postmarked no later than Election Day, and they must be counted as long as they are received within seven days.
Here are when some major population centers expect their next ballot drops:
