Poll Shows Karen Bass Trailing in LA Mayor Race
Left 50%
Center 0%
Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
A poll released Wednesday by the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored with the Los Angeles Times, found Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass trailing City Council member Nithya Raman in the city's mayoral race. Raman had 39 percent support to Bass's 28 percent, with 33 percent of respondents still undecided. Bass is the incumbent and Los Angeles's first female mayor. In the June all-candidate primary, Raman came from behind to pass fellow candidate Spencer Pratt. At the end of July, new figures showed the city's homeless population had risen over the past year after declining for the previous two years.
Sourcing check · Rests on documents, no one quoted · 2 articles
No article quotes anyone; the reporting rests on dataset. It was on the record from the first report.
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- How it developed
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This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage is simply thinner on the poll itself. It says Bass is trailing Raman and that many voters are still undecided, and it stops there. Right-leaning coverage supplies the missing margin, putting Raman eleven points ahead. Bass's share appears as 28 percent only in the New York Post. That figure, set against a large undecided bloc, is what turns a trail from a headline into a measurable hole. Both sides point to the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies survey with the Los Angeles Times, but only one prints the split.
The two sides do not describe the same challenger. Left-leaning coverage identifies Raman as a City Council member. Right-leaning coverage calls her a "socialist challenger."
How many voters did the Berkeley poll interview, and what is its margin of error?
Bottom line
Left-leaning coverage of this poll never prints Raman's share; that 39 percent appears only in the New York Post.
The receipts — 4 facts one side's coverage lacks
- 33% of voters in the poll were undecided
- Los Angeles homeless count rose over the last year after two years of decline
- Raman came from behind to pass Spencer Pratt after the June jungle primary
- Raman failed as chair of the City Council committee on homelessness
The Left View
The Hill reports the Berkeley/Los Angeles Times survey as showing Bass behind Raman and highlights that many respondents remain undecided, presenting the result as a still-open snapshot of the race rather than a conclusive judgment.
The Right View
The New York Post calls the poll "brutal" for Bass and says that if she does not "start making her case now, she will lose — and the socialist 'red wave' will come to LA." It ties a "major shift in momentum" since June to the July homeless-count increase, which it calls "a massive blow" that undercut her primary claim that housing efforts were "starting to work," and it cites what it terms her "failures in the Palisades Fire and the rebuilding effort." The Post says the problem is "not a lack of money" but "a lack of political will to enforce the law" and to require treatment, that Raman is "no better than Bass on homelessness," that her Democratic Socialists of America allies have "an agenda that could destroy the city," and that "Socialism is a real threat." It says Bass's record has become "a millstone" and that she must "admit mistakes" and "make the case" rather than rely on "The alternative is worse."
Our Take (balanced)
The left-leaning coverage's strongest argument is that the race is unfinished: with a third of voters undecided, the gap does not yet settle the outcome. The right-leaning coverage's strongest argument is that the poll follows a measurable reversal on homelessness—a count that rose after two years of decline—undercutting the record Bass advanced in June. The central unresolved tension is whether the result mainly reflects a large undecided electorate in an open contest or a performance judgment, especially on homelessness, that a further-left challenger is positioned to convert.
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