With less than 24 hours until Election Day and both candidates holding campaign events on Monday, incumbent Karen Bass has seen her lead widen in prediction market-implied odds against challenger Nithya Raman in the race to run the second-largest city in the nation.
The chance Bass wins the Los Angeles mayoral contest stands at 58%, an increase from 38% one month ago when Raman had a double-digit cushion. Raman now trails at 42%, according to Kalshi's event contract on the Los Angeles Mayor winner.
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Bass' 16 percentage-point lead against Raman comes as the Democratic Socialists of America nearly voted to withdraw its endorsement of the challenger in the Los Angeles mayoral race, according to a Monday report from the Los Angeles Times.
The National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America, in a 14-13 vote, “declined to revoke the endorsement that was passed by DSA’s Los Angeles chapter in September,” per the Los Angeles Times, citing a DSA spokesperson. The committee’s review centered on Raman’s position on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
Divided by age
Despite the incumbent mayor’s lead in prediction market odds, the candidates are tied at 40% among likely voters with nearly one in five undecided, according to an October poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Los Angeles Times.
The survey exposed a sharp age divide: 69% of likely voters under 30 and 74% of those ages 30 to 39 favored Raman, while likely voters older than 65 primarily stood behind Bass.
Jim Newton, a UCLA public policy lecturer and former head of the editorial page of The Los Angeles Times, told The New York Times, “This is the first campaign I can recall where age was as significant a factor as racial demography.”
The divide is fueled by affordability challenges, namely home prices and “other markers of adulthood, which have increasingly moved out of reach for residents under 40,” The New York Times reported on Sunday.
The race has been closely contested with the two candidates trading leads three times last month. The most recent change was Oct. 28, when Bass gained the lead after Rick Caruso, who lost to the incumbent in the 2022 mayoral race, said he is voting for Bass.
The other two times came days apart, Oct. 20 and 22, when Bass announced relief for Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) customers facing high utility bills.
Taxing the billionaire class
California voters will also decide the outcome of a proposed one-time tax on the state's wealthiest residents. The measure, slated to appear on the Tuesday's ballot as Proposition 40, would levy a 5% tax on taxpayers with more than $1 billion in assets.
Traders have become more skeptical of its passage, as the odds for the measure are one-in-four, down from around 35% one month ago, according to Kalshi’s event contracts on whether the California billionaire wealth tax will pass.
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