After the Count

Multiracial Homeowner Conservatives

We projected Pratt at 37, and he landed at 36.6. Raman was projected at 20 and landed at 20.3. Our only real miss was Bass, who ran about 6 points above projection, mostly because Miller and Huang underperformed.

This cluster was Pratt's largest raw vote source and his clearest mass base. He won 77,289 votes here, more than a third of all his citywide votes. But he did not exceed Trump 2024. Trump got 38.0% here; Pratt got 36.6%. He did beat Trump 2020's 32.5%, but not significantly.

Pratt successfully consolidated a large conservative/homeowner vote, but did not unlock a new level beyond the Trump 2024 ceiling. Compared with Caruso, the gap is much larger: Caruso got 48.5% here in the 2022 primary and 57.5% in the general. Pratt was more polarizing and less acceptable to conservative Democrats and moderate independents.

Bass's 32.6 is also notable. She essentially matched her 2022 primary share here, 32.6. That is a decent defensive result for a mayor who conventional wisdom thought of as brutally unpopular among these voters. This was a cluster where Pratt needed to run up the score to make the runoff — and he dramatically failed to do so.

The Haute Moderates

This was Pratt's biggest overperformance. The model knew he would win, but underestimated the scale. He nearly hit 48%, 10 points above projection in his home cluster.

This is also the cluster where Pratt most clearly outperformed Trump. Trump 2024 was 37.0%; Pratt was 47.7%. Trump 2020 was 31.4%. The wealthy Westside homeowner/moderate bloc did not treat Pratt simply as a Republican. They treated him as the strongest anti-Bass, anti-left, anti-disorder vehicle. This is essentially the only place Pratt broke through in the way he needed to make the general election.

This cluster is rich, white, high-turnout, homeowner-heavy, anti-rent-control, and strongly aligned with Hochman/Caruso millionaire class politics, and Pratt's performance was likely accentuated by his personal story and rage at mismanagement following the Palisades Wildfires.

This was also an area where we expected Adam Miller to be a real strength among ideologically moderate/conservative Democratic voters. The projection gave him 13, and he got 8.6 (still his best cluster). If Miller had any plausible geographic home, it was this cluster. But Pratt, despite his personal style and lack of experience, beat him for the "managerial anti-status-quo moderate" vote.

Latino Suburban Populists

This is perhaps the most interesting and telling cluster, and one we may have done a disservice to by grouping it with Conservative LA in our preview, when it behaves more like a distinct fourth LA.

We identified this cluster as the key test: could Pratt hold the Trump 2024/Caruso-ish Latino suburban populist vote? The answer was no. Pratt got 23.9%, far below Trump 2024's 32.1%, and nowhere near Caruso's 39.6% primary share.

Bass was the major overperformer: projected at 28, actual 36.0. Raman also overperformed, 25.3 vs 21. This cluster did not polarize into Pratt vs the left. It reverted toward Democratic/institutional candidates, with Bass leading and Raman also credible.

That is one of the clearest demographic lessons: Latino Trump 2024 movement did not pass onto Pratt. These voters may have been open to Trump in a presidential context and Caruso in a mayoral context, but Pratt did not inherit the "crime + populism + dissatisfaction" vote, and growing dissatisfaction with Trump's second reign so far tanked Pratt further. In the absence of such populist movement among these voters, Bass' labor and institutional support, including from overlapping councilmembers and sometime-critics Monica Rodriguez and Imelda Padilla, won out.

Playa/Westchester Moderates

This cluster is affluent, highly educated, and homeowner-heavy, but more Democratic than the Haute Moderates. That showed up clearly. Pratt beat Trump 2024 here by about 6 points, but he did not dominate. Bass won with 37.1. Raman got a respectable 24.8.

The big story is Miller's collapse. Projected at 14, actual 3.9. The affluent technocratic moderate lane just did not materialize, and his projected voters instead flowed to Bass as the institutional incumbent, while Raman picked up the small (4%) projected Huang voters. Another area of relative Bass strength: despite her overall collapse among white voters, she was able to win a credible number of partisan moderate Democrats.

Westside Liberals

The model got the central story right: this was the Raman/Bass battleground. It also correctly said Raman needed a clear plurality here to have a strong runoff path. She technically won, but only by about 500 votes out of more than 200,000 ballots: 33.2 to 32.9.

Pratt overperformed here, too, 24.7 vs a projection of 21. These voters are mostly high-information liberals, socially liberal, educated, renter-heavy by Westside standards, and historically Bass-friendly. Pratt's 24.7 suggests a real anti-incumbent/moderate backlash even among some affluent Democrats, something we also saw with Haute Moderates. While a significant Pratt breakthrough among these voters never materialized despite many viral anecdotes, he still overperformed his baseline among white homeowners, if no one else.

But Raman's result is probably the single most important result for her runoff path. Before the election, we asked whether she could break into liberal mainstream voters. She did. She did not crush Bass here, but she fought her to a draw in one of the city's largest and highest-turnout clusters. Given that Bass won this region decisively in 2022, Raman's narrow win is a major shift.

Bass, however, did not collapse. She fell from 52.5% in the 2022 primary to 32.9%, a huge drop, but in a three-way race, she remained fully competitive. This region will be among the major battlegrounds in the general election.

(Historically) Black LA

This was Bass's strongest and most important overperformance.

We said Bass needed to be pushing 50 here or she was in trouble. She got 57%. That is below her 2022 primary mark of 61.3, but still a commanding result.

Pratt badly underperformed: projected 16, actual 11.1. He also ran well below Trump 2024's 17.0, though roughly in line with Trump 2020's 10.3. The Trump 2024 increase in Black LA did not translate into Pratt municipal support.

This cluster is the anchor of Bass's first-place finish. She got 50,350 votes here, while Raman got 19,277 and Pratt got 9,811. The raw margin from Black LA alone gave Bass a huge cushion against Raman's Left LA landslides.

Demographically, this is where the Bass correlation with Black CVAP (0.77) is most evident. This correlation is not just racial identity in a narrow sense; it is institutional Democratic loyalty, older political networks, Bass's congressional history, and resistance to both Pratt and a full left insurgency.

Si Se Puede

This is the other huge Latino finding. Bass overperformed, Raman overperformed slightly, Pratt underperformed heavily, and the minor candidates collapsed.

We described Si Se Puede as Latino-labor, low-income, renter-heavy, Sanders/de León/Lee friendly, and less aligned with the gentrified left than with older labor/machine structures. The result strongly confirms that. Bass won by 7.3 points, very close to the "8-10 point lead" we said she would want.

Pratt's 16.1 is especially telling. Trump 2024 got 25.6% here. Pratt got almost 10 points less. Caruso got 29.4% in the 2022 primary and 47.4 in the general. Pratt was not able to convert the rightward presidential swing or the Caruso vote into a durable local base.

Raman's 28.3 is also interesting. She did better than projected and better than her image as a gentrified-left candidate might imply. But she did not beat Bass. This suggests she had enough progressive appeal to grow beyond Commie Corridor-type areas, but not enough institutional connection to win Latino-labor LA. A key test for Raman in the general election will be her ability to expand dramatically with Latino voters.

Commie Corridor

This is the cleanest Raman overperformance and the cleanest Huang collapse.

Polling was right that this was Raman-Huang terrain, but wrong about how much Huang would hold. She got 52%, 12 points above projection. Huang got only 4.6%, more than 8 points below the projection.

This is a major strategic finding: the DSA/tenant-left/geographic-left vote did not splinter into a purist socialist protest vote at scale. As the race clarified and the real specter of a Bass vs Pratt general election was raised, it consolidated behind Raman as the viable left candidate.

Raman's 52% is enormous compared with Viola's 17.9 in 2022, but that is not a contradiction. Viola was a protest/left lane candidate in a Bass-Caruso race; Raman was a viable runoff contender with elected-office credibility and a real path. The left vote became strategic.

Pratt and Bass were basically on projection, and the remaining Raman overperformance came from the vanishing Miller voters. The primary story in Commie Corridor was Huang-to-Raman tactical voting.

Multiracial Urban Professionals

Same story as Commie Corridor, but slightly less intense. Raman overperformed by 5.9. Huang collapsed by 7.3. Pratt and Bass were almost exactly where expected, and no Miller vote.

This is a strong validation of the cluster's identity: young, renter-heavy, educated, transient, left-liberal. Raman was the natural candidate once the left consolidated. Huang did not become the vehicle for this electorate, despite the cluster's high rent-control and Mejia/Viola affinity.

The correlation story is very clear here: Raman tracks renters, youth, rent control support, and anti-Prop 36 politics. Urban Professionals gave her 43.9 while holding Pratt to 17.1. This is the renter-youth-professional left in electoral form.

Multiracial Progressive Tenants

This was one of the most accurate top-three projections. Raman, Bass, and Pratt all landed almost exactly where expected. The main difference was Huang and Miller underperforming and "Other" overperforming.

That "Other" number, 9.6, stands out. This cluster may have had more localized, ethnic, protest, or low-information fragmentation than the projection model captured. The many smaller ethnic communities, between Thai Town, Filipinotown, Little Bangladesh, and Koreatown may have voted for minor candidates on ethnic lines or at random.

Huang's 5.9 was her best cluster result, but still far below the projected 12, perhaps reaching some lower-information racially-polarized Asian voters.

Gentrifying Northeast LA

Before the election, we called this "Commie Corridor lite," and the result fits almost perfectly. Raman won big, but not as overwhelmingly as in the Corridor. Pratt was exactly on projection. Bass overperformed by 4.4. Huang collapsed.

This is one of the most interesting Bass/Raman overlap zones. The area is progressive, but more homeowner-inflected and less intensely left than Echo Park/Silver Lake. Raman still won by nearly 10 points, which is impressive. But Bass getting 31.4 shows that the institutional Democratic vote remained significant even in a left-trending geography. Her relative strength with Latino voters kept her competitive in this region.

Compared with past elections, Raman's 41.3 is below Mejia's 59.3 and above Viola's 11.6 by a mile. Again, this means the left geography did not behave like a pure protest vote. It behaved like a strategic progressive electorate.