Latino voters backed Karen Bass in June. Will she maintain their vote for LA mayor in November?

There is a defining question in the Los Angeles mayoral election that perhaps only the ballot count can answer: Which candidate do the city’s Latinos, the largest ethnic group in this multicultural metropolis, prefer?

Polling points in all directions. Just before ballots were mailed this month, a poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found that Councilmember Nithya Raman had a commanding, 24-point advantage among Latinos in her bid to unseat Mayor Karen Bass.

That took both camps by surprise. The Bass campaign dismissed it outright, and even some Raman operatives acknowledged that it was a bigger margin than their own surveys suggested. The picture was clouded further a week later when a Bass-backed poll reported that Latinos favored her by 12 points. That, too, seems unlikely since citywide polls consistently show Raman leading, and it would be hard to build much of a lead in L.A. without significant support from Latinos, who account for more than a third of the city’s voters.

That leaves analysts to search for other ways to measure the leanings of Latinos in this campaign. One place to look is actual results.

An analysis by CalMatters of the votes cast in June, when Bass, Raman and Spencer Pratt all were on the ballot, found Bass vastly outperformed her opponents in precincts where Latinos accounted for at least half of the vote. About 1 out of 5 precincts in the city are majority Latino, based on data from the state’s official redistricting database.

Bass carried 120 of these 144 precincts, compared to just 16 for Raman. Combined, Bass won those precincts by securing 37.5% of their votes, exceeding Raman and Pratt’s vote share by 11 and 16 percentage points, respectively.

The geographic distribution of those precincts also is significant. The precincts that Bass won stretch from the heavily Latino bedroom communities of the South Bay, through the center of the city and up into the Northeast Valley, where neighborhoods of single-family homes in Sunland and Pacoima include many longtime residents and homeowners.

Meanwhile, those that Raman carried were concentrated in the communities in and around her city council district — Hollywood, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Highland Park — home to younger Angelenos and many others who are newer to L.A. Those are densely populated communities, with fewer single-family homes and more apartments.

Pratt’s Latino support was minimal and scattered, a passing reminder of why a Trump-backed Republican was a non-starter in a liberal city.

What the June votes illustrate, then, is that Latino supporters mirror the larger electorate, with homeowners and longtime residents more inclined to support Bass, while renters and newcomers find Raman more appealing.

The strength of this data is that it is not subject to the preconceptions or interpretations of pollsters. It represents actual votes cast, and supporters of a candidate who vote for that candidate are unlikely to change sides in a runoff. As a result, it provides evidence that Bass enters the fall with a broad band of Latino support, drawn mainly from middle-class communities where Latino voters are plentiful.

That said, this by no means guarantees Bass a victory among Latinos — any more than it suggests she’ll be reelected. Raman’s support may be less concentrated but greater overall, less visible on a map but more powerful in the end. The shock Berkeley IGS poll from earlier this month indicates that could be happening.

That was underscored when I reviewed the CalMatters analysis with strategists for the two campaigns. A representative of the Raman camp, for instance, said the character of Latino-majority precincts for Bass is not reflective of the larger Latino electorate, which is spread across the city and more heavily tilted toward newer arrivals and renters — the core of Raman’s support. 

“Many Latinos live in younger, renter-heavy communities where Nithya has built strong support,” said campaign spokesperson Lauren Perez-Rangel. “They’re ready for change, and they’re choosing Nithya.”

The citywide surveys reinforce that argument. All of the credible ones show Raman with at least a modest lead, and since Latinos are the city’s largest voting demographic, it’s hard to see how Raman could be ahead without them, Perez-Rangel noted. The LA Times poll, she added, showed Raman with an overwhelming advantage among Latinos under age 50. 

The Bass campaign, by contrast, sees those Latino-majority precincts as a reliable core of support and a base from which to build. Julie Rodríguez, who manages the Bass campaign, said she regards homeowners as a natural constituency for the mayor in a race against a challenger long supported by the Democratic Socialists of America. Homeowners are more likely to rate public safety as a high priority, and Bass’ record gives her important bragging points, with incidents of violent and property crime at generational lows.

The two campaigns agree that winning support from relative newcomers to the city — those who have lived here for five years or less — is likely to turn on which candidate can make the city more affordable.

There, Raman has the edge. Her affordability credentials start with her record as the member of the city council who spearheaded the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, a measure that limits annual rent hikes by Los Angeles landlords. Bass signed that ordinance, so both candidates can claim some responsibility for it, though it is correctly more associated with Raman.

Beyond that, Bass has proposed expanding city-backed day care, and Raman has offered a host of ideas for expediting the construction of rental housing, trusting that a boost in supply will produce discernable downward pressure on rents. Both candidates promise to reduce City Hall impediments to new construction.

Affordability is not only popular with Latinos, of course, but it is at the top of the list of most surveys that ask renters what matters most to them. Since many Latinos are renters, those two demographics overlap.

One other dynamic lurks within the June election results and their window into the inclinations of Latino voters in Los Angeles: Although both campaigns recognize the importance of appealing to Latino voters overall, they are reaching out to different parts of the community.

Raman’s campaign has a youthful cast, positioning the candidate as a fresh antidote to the stultifying practices of City Hall. She speaks fluent Spanish, and her messaging is intended to draw Latinos into a multi-ethnic coalition that unites young people and renters across onetime divides of race. In her coalition, it matters less whether the voter is white, Black or Latino, and more that the voter is fed up with conventional Los Angeles politics.

Bass, meanwhile, draws upon more institutional bases of support. A longtime liberal Democrat and native of the city, Bass enjoys endorsements from major civil rights and immigrant rights groups, unions and respected leaders such as state Sen. María Elena Durazo, a stalwart of the city’s labor movement.

In the end, elections turn on who turns out. Mashing together the June election results and the polling done since then suggests that Raman probably has broader backing among Latinos in Los Angeles, but Bass probably has stronger support among more consistent voters. 

Will younger Latinos turn out for Raman in sufficient numbers to overcome Bass’ strength among Latinos who own homes and have lived here longer? The June election captures a moment in time and reveals actual voter behavior, but the November election will attract new voters and reflect the campaign itself.

In the end, those are the results that will matter. 

Data reporters Mohamed Al Elew and Jeremia Kimelman contributed to this story.