Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman is within striking distance of Spencer Pratt in the race for L.A.’s next mayor. She is expected to overtake the Republican and former reality star for second place when the tally from the next round of ballots is released on Sunday afternoon.

After she was slotted in a distant third, Raman has slowly gained on Pratt and is now within 1% of the votes needed to surpass him. With 78% of the ballots counted, Raman is at 26.21%, and Pratt has 27.32%. Incumbent Karen Bass, with 34.81% of the vote, has already earned her place in the November runoff.

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Pratt has seemingly grown weary of the lengthy vote counting, which has seen his lead dwindle over the last week. On Saturday, he posted an image of Russell Crowe’s John Nash from “A Beautiful Mind” on X with the caption, “Me trying to figure out how votes get counted in LA.”

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Just one day prior, Pratt posted photos of himself posing in front of Los Angeles City Hall on X with the one-word caption, “Patience.”

While Pratt, along with other conservatives, has expressed frustration with California’s slow vote processing, there are several reasons the state takes longer to insure accuracy. One cause is mail-in voting, which is extremely popular in the Golden State. Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber reported in 2024 that roughly 13 million of the 16 million votes in the 2024 presidential election were submitted by mail.

“The reason a lot of the ballots haven’t been counted yet is because they were dropped in the mail Monday [or] Tuesday, and as long as they’re postmarked by Tuesday, they get to be counted,” Christian Grose, director of USC’s Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, told CBS News. “And a lot people in this election, especially waited until the last minute to vote because there are a lot of choices on the ballot.”