Bass comes from behind, now in dead heat with Raman in mayor's race, new poll shows

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Set us as preferred The race for mayor of Los Angeles is a dead heat as the campaign draws to a close, with a new poll showing incumbent Karen Bass erasing the double-digit lead previously held by Councilmember Nithya Raman.Raman and Bass now each have 40% of likely L.A.

voters in their camps, with 19% still undecided ahead of the Nov.3 election, according to the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times.

The neck-and-neck contest is a big change from September, when Raman jumped out to an 11-percentage-point lead with support from 39% of likely voters compared with Bass at 28%.It follows weeks of relentless attacks on Raman by Bass, whom some analysts had predicted would need to campaign more aggressively to close the gap with her challenger.

“It’s certainly a breath of fresh air for Bass to see the race close.She’ll probably feel the campaign is having the effect she wants it to have, which is to put more focus on Raman and put Raman on the defensive,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Berkeley IGS Poll.The survey released Wednesday was conducted online in English and Spanish with a sample of 2,197 likely city voters between Oct.

19 and Oct.25.

It has a margin of error of about three percentage points.The leveling off of the race, along with the sharp decline in undecided voters, was spurred largely by conservative voters who chose Republican Spencer Pratt in the primary deciding to vote for the mayor in the runoff, said DiCamillo.In the September Berkeley IGS/L.A.

Times poll, 22% of Pratt voters said they planned to support Bass, while 16% said they favored Raman.That left a whopping 63% of Pratt voters undecided still.In the new poll, Bass shot up to 41% of the Pratt vote, while Raman dropped to 14% and 45% were still undecided.

Pratt hasn’t endorsed either candidate in the race and continues to bash both Raman and Bass on social media.“The Pratt ...