Early results tonight in the race to be the next mayor in Los Angeles were close. Rep. Karen Bass led Rick Caruso by less that 2,000 votes and 12%.
According to the Los Angeles County Register- Recorder/County clerk, Caruso won by a slim margin over Bass. He received 50.26% and Bass got 49.74%.
Who In Hollywood Voted For Karen Bass & Who Voted For Rick Caruso
Early results include vote-by mail ballots cast prior to Election Day and ballot center ballots that were cast prior to Election Day. It is amazing that Caruso has a slight lead, considering that he was once behind Bass by a significant margin. A Los Angeles Times-U.C. In late October, a Berkeley poll showed that the race was tightening following Bass’s large lead earlier in his campaign. Experts warned that the race would not be called today.
Bass, who is a six-term congressman, wants to be the first Black woman and the second Black person to head Los Angeles. Caruso, a real estate billionaire, is looking to win a campaign that’s on track to spend over $100 million — much of it from Caruso’s own fortune and spent to propel him into contention.
Bass was comfortably ahead in the polls a month ago. But, the survey prior to Election Day showed that Caruso had narrowed the gap significantly. Bass was able to beat Caruso by 45% to 41%. This gap is within the 4% margin. The poll also found that 13% of voters were undecided.
J. Wallin Opinion Research conducted a poll in Southern California on Oct. 15-17. It found that Caruso had a 3 point lead. This was also within the margins of error.
An earlier version from the UC Berkeley IGS Poll that was conducted in October showed Bass having a 15 point advantage among likely voters.
The winner will take over the city’s leadership after a scandal which has engulfed City Hall for the past month. Three council members and a county labor official were part of a leaked conversation from October 2021. The conversation included racist comments and attempts at manipulating redistricting.
“We’ve had a really volatile month in L.A. County, and Rick Caruso has made a late push here that clearly has made, at least in the polling, a significant difference,” said Mindy Romero, director of USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy.
Caruso was criticised for using his personal fortune to finance his campaign. But he said he didn’t
take money from special interest groups, he would not be swayed by lobbyists and have the city’s best interests at heart.
Bass has also criticised Caruso for switching between political parties. Bass was also critical of Caruso’s switch to a Republican party from 2016 to 2019. Caruso donated to anti-abortion activists, which allowed Bass to stand out as an avowed Republican. “lifelong, pro-choice Democrat”A city with a strong Democratic lean.
While both candidates acknowledged the seriousness of Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis, they differed in their approaches to it. The latest homeless count released this month showed a 1.7% increase in the number of unhoused people in Los Angeles since 2020, bringing the total to 41,980 — some feel that count, taken on one of the coldest nights of the year, may underestimate the true growth of the problem.
Initial results from Tuesday’s voting were posted by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk shortly after 8 p.m. — but experts cautioned that people should not read too much into them, with millions of vote- by-mail ballots still to be counted. It is possible that a close race will not be decided until later in the week.
City News Service contributed this report.