Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (left) and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.
Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
As Los Angeles voters head to the polls on Tuesday to choose their next mayor, all eyes are on the race for the nation’s second-largest city.
However, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes after all votes have been counted, the top two vote-getters will face a run-off in November. Traders at prediction market platform Kalsi believe incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and rebel former reality TV star Spencer Pratt are the most likely to advance to the second round.
Traders are fairly confident that Bass will advance to the second round, with a probability of 93%. Bass has consistently held a lead in the race’s polls, but fell far short of the 50 percent threshold for an outright victory in the first round. Traders say Mr. Pratt has about a three-quarters chance of being promoted.
City councilor Nitya Raman is also challenging the incumbent. Raman has a 28% chance of making it to the second round.
The Los Angeles mayoral race is nonpartisan, but Mr. Pratt is a registered Republican, and Mr. Raman and Mr. Bass are Democrats.
Traders once viewed Mr. Raman as the frontrunner in the mayor’s race, at one point giving him a nearly 60% chance of victory, but after the May debate, Mr. Raman’s odds fell to Mr. Kalsi. She currently has only an 11% chance of winning the entire race.
This fall was so pronounced that Mr. Pratt made several comments about it during his campaign. “She went from 64% to 8% on Kalsi,” he said on Bill Maher’s podcast “Club Random.” “So she ended up getting bombed.”
But Pratt has only a 25% chance of winning the mayoral race. Traders believe Bass has a 65% chance of being re-elected.
Mr Bass had been seen as vulnerable after his approval ratings dipped over his response to the wildfires that hit the city and surrounding areas in 2025, but Mr Platt’s conservative politics could be an obstacle to gaining support from the majority of voters in a very green city. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won 70% of the Angeleno vote in the 2024 presidential election.
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalsi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and minority ownership.
