As additional ballots are counted in Los Angeles, Kalshi traders are overwhelmingly pricing that city councilwoman Nithya Raman, not Spencer Pratt, will claim the second spot in November’s runoff election.
The market for who will advance in the election shows Pratt at 1% while Raman is priced at 99%.
For informational purposes only. Not trading advice.
Although Pratt still holds a narrow lead in the reported vote count, traders appear to believe the remaining ballots will favor Raman.
Raman trails Pratt by just over one percentage point in the vote count so far.
Incumbent mayor Karen Ruth Bass has captured 34.8%. Pratt is in second place with 27.3% of the vote, and Raman is closing in on Pratt with 26.2%. The Associated Press reports that 78% of all votes have been counted as of Sunday afternoon.
How did we get here?
Pratt had a comfortable second place lead over Raman after the first night of vote counting, but as mail-in ballots continue to arrive, that lead was slowly eroded as Raman picked up more votes.
Election data expert Paul Mitchell told CBS News that Pratt’s vote share has been steadily dropping ever since the second night of vote counting. He says there’s nothing definitive yet, but he expects things to get worse for Pratt as the vote counting continues.
“Spencer Pratt has been losing [his] share of the vote with every one of these new ballot dumps, and we expect that to continue,” Mitchell said. “The question is will he drop? Will Nithya Raman rise? And at some point, will there be an inflection point where Nithya Raman would take over that second spot?”
Pratt seems to be getting impatient about the vote counting process. According to Variety, on Saturday, he posted a photo of himself standing in front of Los Angeles City Hall with the caption, “Patience.”
More recently, he posted a meme of Russell Crowe portraying mathematician John Nash standing behind a number-covered window with the caption, “Me trying to figure out how votes get counted in LA.”
Raman simply retweeted a story from the Los Angeles Times on her X account with the headline, “Raman closed in on former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, cutting his lead to about three percentage points.”
Will Pratt concede?
Kalshi is also offering a market on when, if ever, Pratt will concede the election. Traders now price the chances of a concession before July at 77%, and before June 15 at 18%.
Will Pratt leave LA?
There’s a lot more at stake for Pratt than just becoming LA’s next mayor. He could be leaving the city entirely if he doesn’t win the election.
People Magazine reported in May that he said in an interview on Adam Carolla’s podcast that if Bass or Raman won the election, “I will be done with trying to live in LA. I’ll take that money from the Newsom state park and the [Los Angeles Department of Water and Power] and I’ll go find somewhere that my kids will not have to see naked zombies and I can have the last American dream somewhere.”
The takeaway:
Kalshi markets now predict
Follow Danny Gallagher on Instagram: @writerdannygallagher
Follow Kalshi on X: @Kalshi
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