To elaborate on Jeff’s unpopular-but-accurate assessment of the Los Angeles mayor’s race, Spencer Pratt’s third-place finish is deeply disappointing, but not particularly shocking, if you were paying attention to the preelection polls.
In the month of May, four major surveys of the race were published, and they can be found over at RealClearPolitics. In three of them, Pratt was at 22 percent.
In the Emerson poll conducted May 7 to 9, Pratt was three percentage points ahead of progressive city council member Nithya Raman. In the Cygnal poll conducted May 15 to 18, Pratt was four percentage points ahead of Raman. In the most recent Los Angeles poll, conducted May 19 to 24, Pratt was in a close third place, three points behind Raman.
In the fourth, conducted by McLaughlin Associates from May 26 to 28 on behalf of the California Post, Pratt led the field at 30 percent. McLaughlin Associates is a good pollster, but even good pollsters can have an off day or an unrealistic sense of who will show up to vote.
As of this writing, incumbent Democrat Karen Bass has 34.32 percent of the vote, Raman has 28.98 percent of the vote, and Pratt has 25.5 percent. Right now, Raman is 29,368 votes ahead of Pratt.
Pratt finished a little ahead of where three of the four most recent polls had him, and all three top candidates finished around where polling suggested they would finish. Again, Pratt’s third-place finish is frustrating, but not particularly surprising. Pratt knew how to electrify the conservative media world and social media, but that’s a different goal than figuring out how to finish in the top two in a 14-candidate race in a city that has 55 percent registered Democrats and less than 15 percent registered Republicans.