- Nithya Raman is now -150 to win the Los Angeles mayoral runoff, with Karen Bass drifting to +115.
- A new UC Berkeley and Los Angeles Times poll gives Raman 39% to 28% for Bass among likely voters.
- A 56% majority gave Bass a poor or very poor grade for how she handled the 2025 Palisades fire.
- Bass took the June primary, yet a third of the electorate is still undecided with the Nov. 3 runoff six weeks out.
LOS ANGELES – Nithya Raman has overtaken Karen Bass as the betting favorite to be the next mayor of Los Angeles, now priced at -150 to the incumbent’s +115, after a new poll handed the councilwoman an 11-point edge with under six weeks left before the Nov. 3 runoff.
The Market Follows The Poll
Ten days ago the market had Bass as the clear favorite at -215, with Raman the underdog at +165. That has fully reversed, with Raman now -150 and Bass drifting out to +115.
Raman’s -150 implies about 60%. Bass’s +115 implies roughly 46.5%. A bet on Bass at -215 needed a $215 stake to win $100. The same wager on her today pays $115 on $100 instead, a longer price on the same candidate that measures how far the market has moved against her since the poll landed.
No licensed California sportsbooks exist to take a bet like this one, leaving anyone following California gambling with no way to act on the move.
What The Poll Found
The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies ran the survey with the Los Angeles Times as co-sponsor, sampling 2,150 likely city voters online over Sept. 15-20, NBC Los Angeles reported. Raman drew 39% to Bass’s 28%, a third of respondents had not picked a side, and the error margin runs roughly 3 points.
The topline understates how bad Bass’s position is. Her unfavorable mark sits at 63%, more than double the 28% who see her favorably, while Raman’s split is nearly flat, with 40% liking her and 39% not. The generational gap is the starkest number in the sample – voters age 18 to 29 back Raman over Bass 66% to 4%.
The 2025 Palisades fire remains the anchor on her, with 56% calling her handling poor or very poor and 14% calling it good or excellent. USC professor Dan Schnur told NBC Los Angeles the shift is less about ideology than a demand for change, saying Raman is gaining because “she represents dramatic change.”
The Primary, The Pushback And The Nov. 3 Runoff
Bass actually led the June 2 primary, taking 34.3% of the vote to Raman’s 29% in a multi-candidate field. Because no one cleared a majority under the city’s nonpartisan system, the top two advanced to the runoff.
Alex Stack, the Bass campaign’s spokesman, dismissed the survey as an “outlier poll which got the June primary wrong” and argued that every other poll points to a close race. Neither number is settled: a third of the electorate has not chosen, and the race will be decided at the ballot box on Nov. 3, not on the board.