It has been three days since Californians cast their primary election votes, but the state’s marquee races are still in flux. And one of the biggest questions remaining is, who will advance to challenge Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles?
Under California’s primary system, the top two candidates, regardless of party, advance to the general election.
With ballots still being counted, it has yet to be determined whether voters in the mayoral race or for governor will be choosing between two Democrats or between a Democrat and a Republican. But there was more clarity after Friday’s returns, which allowed The Associated Press to determine that Xavier Becerra had secured one of the two spots in the general election for California governor.
Here’s what to know after Friday’s vote counting update:
Raman is surging in election returns.
Bass already secured her spot in the runoff with a significant enough lead on election night, so the only question has been who will face her.
Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, a Republican, jumped to an early lead on Tuesday to challenge Bass, a Democrat. It seemed like a triumphant moment for Pratt, whose showing was enough to attract media crews for hours even though he didn’t let them into his election night party.
But Nithya Raman, a progressive City Council member running to the mayor’s left, has slowly and steadily moved upward in returns. After results were updated Friday afternoon, Raman had cut Pratt’s lead in half compared with what it was on election night.
Pratt now has 28.2% of the vote, while Raman has 24.9%. If their trajectories continue as the remaining ballots are counted, she could overtake Pratt.
In that situation, Raman, a former ally of Bass, would force the mayor into a competitive intraparty fight, in which progressive and moderate Democrats would battle over policies on housing, homelessness and other quality-of-life matters.
It is still too soon to say whom Becerra will face.
On Friday, Xavier Becerra, a Democrat who was a Cabinet member in the Biden administration, surpassed Steve Hilton, a Republican former Fox News host, for the first time since polls closed. As of Friday evening, he was leading the race with 26.7% of the vote, with Hilton in a close second, at 26.4%.
Democrats waited longer than Republicans to turn in their ballots, so Democrats have improved their standing with every update in returns.
Tom Steyer, a Democratic billionaire pitching himself as a progressive, could still catch up as more votes are tallied. He is in third with 21% of the vote, but it’s not clear that he will be able to surpass Hilton, who remains 5 percentage points ahead.
California Republicans, solidly in the minority, coalesced around Hilton, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump. The field of Democrats was crowded and, many voters said, uninspiring, which was expected to result in a divided Democratic vote. The results so far have borne out those predictions.
It may be days before close races are called.
California relies heavily on mail ballots, which require a lot of labor to certify and tabulate, slowing the vote count process. That delay may have been compounded this election by unsure voters, some of whom waited until the last moment to submit their ballots.
Some counties, including Los Angeles, update their vote counts daily, whereas others release numbers less frequently. In Sacramento County, figures are updated only on Tuesdays and Fridays.
More than 9 million ballots appear to have been cast in the primary statewide, according to data from state and county officials, compared with around 7 million in the past two primary elections. More than 3 million ballots have yet to be counted.
Trump has questioned the integrity of California’s elections, but Democrats have pushed back.
Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the lengthy counting process meant Democrats were stealing the election — an assertion aligned with years of false claims by the president and his allies that U.S. elections are rife with fraud.
“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” Trump wrote at 1:05 a.m. on Thursday, claiming that election fraud worthy of investigation by the Justice Department had occurred in Los Angeles. “Why the vote counting DELAY???”
On Friday, Robert Renner, an assistant U.S. attorney, toured the Los Angeles County vote processing center in the City of Industry to observe the counting process, according to a Justice Department spokesperson.
Earlier, the president had falsely claimed that Hilton had already beaten his opponents. “Congratulations to Steve Hilton on coming in first,” the president posted to Truth Social on Wednesday evening, when millions of ballots remained to be counted.
The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, wrote in a social media post that there was “a lot of misinformation floating around about California’s election — including from the President.” It shared a video explainer on why it takes so long to count votes in the state.
The races for governor and Los Angeles mayor aren’t the only contests on voters’ minds.
Californians also weighed in on seats in Congress and the state Legislature, as well as local ballot issues, such as a proposed tax on wealthy CEOs in San Francisco. Those races, while lower in profile, are offering clues to the priorities of a complex and varied electorate.
Friday’s returns allowed Democrats to breathe a little easier over a Sacramento-area House district that was redrawn to favor their party. Richard Pan, a former Democratic state lawmaker, moved into second place and in better position to secure one of the two spots for the general election.
It was the first updated tally in the district since election night, and Democrats groused this week that they may be shut out of the general election because there were five Democrats on the ballot and none were in the top two until Friday.
The San Francisco CEO tax, which was backed by unions and some of the city’s top elected officials, was losing in the tally as of Friday afternoon. That suggests that arguments against a proposed statewide tax on billionaires’ assets could be making headway. At the same time, candidates backed by Big Tech donors did not fare well in the governor’s race or in congressional races.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman talks to reporters after a campaign event in Los Angeles, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo) 
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