Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass carried far more Latino-majority neighborhoods than her rivals in last week’s primary election, an analysis of precinct data shows, helping her finish first and qualify for the Nov. 3 runoff with City Councilmember Nithya Raman.
Bass carried 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods, including Boyle Heights, Pacoima and Historic South-Central. That was a 46% increase from 2022, when she won 24 Latino-majority neighborhoods in a primary race against Rick Caruso and Kevin de León, according to a Times analysis of election data.
Raman was a distant second, winning seven Latino-majority neighborhoods including Highland Park, El Sereno and Lincoln Heights.
Pratt won a single Latino-majority neighborhood, Harbor City, which is 51% Latino, the analysis found.
Bass’s strong showing among Latinos was credited in part to her forceful challenge of the Trump administration’s immigration raids and mass detentions last year.
“Latinos came out for her because she has done a really, really good job in trying to fight the Trump administration,” said Nilza Serrano, the president of Avance Democratic Club, a Latino Democratic organization, which endorsed Bass.
Avance endorsed Caruso in the runoff with Bass four years ago, leading Bass to suggest Caruso bought their support. She later apologized to the group. This time around, she worked behind the scenes to secure endorsements from Democratic clubs like Avance and from important Latino activists like Dolores Huerta and politicians like U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).
“She had a lot more established politicos and respected figures in the Latino community,” said Matt Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o studies at UCLA. “It makes her seem like the more established choice.”
Bass was helped by the fact that Caruso wasn’t in the race this year. Four years ago, Caruso flooded airwaves and televisions with Spanish language ads as he poured more than $100 million into his mayoral campaign.
Bass carried more Latino-majority neighborhoods than Caruso overall in 2022 — 24 to Caruso’s 16 — but Caruso actually performed better in the most heavily Latino neighborhoods, with 34% of the vote in neighborhoods with populations that are at least 80% Latino. Bass had 27% of that vote in 2022.
This year, Bass took 38% of that vote while Raman had 25%. Pratt had about 17% support in those areas.
Barreto noted that Pratt didn’t take a strong stand against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, hurting his appeal to Latinos.
During the sole mayoral debate between the three candidates May 6, Pratt said there wouldn’t be major ICE raids on his watch.
“If they’re legal or illegal, if they’re a danger — I want them off our streets, that’s what I said,” Pratt said. “ICE won’t be coming here because … everybody they’re supposedly looking for, they’re going to be in jail when I’m mayor.”
Pratt didn’t have a coherent message for Latino voters, and didn’t have prominent Latinos campaigning on his behalf, noted Fernando Guerra, the director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.
“Why would he get any votes when he didn’t have a message, didn’t have a messenger and didn’t have a vehicle for that message?” Guerra asked. “He didn’t fund to organize a ground game in any of the Latino neighborhoods.”
Pratt’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Latinos make up about 37% of the electorate in Los Angeles, but polls conducted before the election suggested no single candidate had a lock on their votes.
Bass was leading among Latinos in a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times, in March with 29% support, followed by Pratt at 16%, with Raman at the bottom at 9%.
But in a May poll by Berkeley IGS, Raman shot up among Latinos to 24% with Pratt at 21% and Bass at 20%.
The precinct-level data released by the county doesn’t show how Latinos specifically voted, but how precincts voted. The Times compared those results with Census data for its analysis.
Like Bass, Raman made a concerted effort to win the Latino vote. She came out with ads in Spanish and had numerous events in heavily Latino areas, including doing a happy hour in Boyle Heights, meeting with street vendors and customers in Pico-Union and speaking with business owners on Olvera Street.
Six of the Latino-majority neighborhoods Raman won — El Sereno, Lincoln Heights, Highland Park, Montecito Heights, Glassell Park and Cypress Park — were flipped from supporting Bass in 2022. The seventh she won, Westlake, was carried by Caruso in 2022.
Raman, who immigrated to the U.S. from India with her family as a child, said in a statement that she was “proud to have co-authored L.A.’s Sanctuary City Ordinance and I will enforce it without apology as mayor. I will expand deportation defense funding and make sure no city data is ever used for immigration enforcement.”
“I’ll work every day to make Los Angeles more affordable and create more opportunity, so that Latino families — and all families — can afford to live here and thrive,” Raman said.
Marco Santana, 35, a longtime Van Nuys resident who ran for City Council in 2023, said he was considering supporting Bass until Raman got into the race.
“For me, it’s not just being Latino, it’s also the intersectionality of being relatively young, being first generation,” Santana said. “I feel this sense of urgency from her,” he said.
Bass flipped Boyle Heights and Historic South-Central, two neighborhoods that were won by De León in 2022. She also took Pacoima, Arleta and Sylmar — all areas in the San Fernando Valley that Caruso won in the 2022 primary.
Her campaign said it was organic support that drew Latinos to her.
“This wasn’t some campaign strategy. Karen Bass is the parent of Latino kids and grandchildren and has been in the trenches with these communities for decades,” said Alex Stack, a campaign spokesperson for Bass. “Karen Bass has always fought for the Latino community.”
Stephenie Lucio, a resident of Northridge, had been undecided up until about a week before the election. She said she felt Bass hadn’t done enough to address the issues that are top of mind for her, including homelessness and the impact immigration raids had had on Latinos in L.A.
But in the end she said she voted for Bass, albeit “a little bit reluctantly,” seeing the incumbent as “really speaking up about things that are important to me and the Latino community.”
