2026 Los Angeles Mayor Race Heats Up: Top Candidates, Poll Surges, and Big Issues to Watch

Los Angeles voters head to the polls today, June 2 2026, for the pivotal primary in the Los Angeles mayor race, the first step in deciding who will lead America’s second-largest city for the next four years. Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass faces 13 challengers; if no one secures more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two will advance to a November 3 runoff under the city’s non-partisan system. A late-May Los Angeles Times/USC poll shows a neck-and-neck contest: Bass holds 28 percent support, Councilmember Nithya Raman is at 27 percent, and reality-TV personality-turned-housing-advocate Spencer Pratt trails narrowly with 25 percent. Progressive organizer Rae Chen Huang, tech entrepreneur Adam Miller and a slate of business, labor and community activists round out the 14-person field. Bass, the former congresswoman elected in 2022, has campaigned on expanding her signature Inside Safe homeless-housing initiative, arguing that “the fundamentals are finally in motion” and promising another 15,000 interim and permanent beds if re-elected. Speaking to reporters Monday, she said she is “confident voters will send me to the runoff”. Raman, who represents Hollywood and Silver Lake on the City Council, positions herself as the progressive alternative. She pledges stricter rent-gouging enforcement, a Green New Deal-style jobs program and police-accountability reforms, framing the race as “a choice between more of the same and structural change.” Pratt, leveraging celebrity name recognition, pounds a centrist message focused on accelerating housing approvals, beefing up LAPD patrol staffing and auditing city departments for waste. Key issues driving search interest in the LA mayoral election include homelessness, skyrocketing rents, public safety perceptions and a city budget grappling with pandemic-era revenue gaps. Early voting was up 11 percent over the 2022 cycle, according to the county registrar, suggesting heavy engagement among younger and first-time voters. Live results are expected shortly after polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific; mail-in ballots postmarked today can arrive by June 9 and still count, so final tallies may stretch into next week. Check back here for up-to-the-minute vote counts and analysis as the Los Angeles mayor race narrows to its final two contenders.