The Political Neighborhoods Of Los Angeles
The city of Los Angeles begins the process of selecting its new mayor today. There are a dozen candidates on the ballot, but the front-runners — Rep. Karen Bass and real estate developer Rick Caruso — appear headed for a November runoff, as neither is likely to clear 50 percent of the vote today.
Their campaigns have both focused on public safety and cost of living. Caruso, who has loaned his campaign over $30 million, has blanketed the airwaves with promises to declare a state of emergency on homelessness and hire 1,500 more police officers. Bass, who led the state Assembly before serving a decade in the U.S. House of Representatives, has highlighted her “crisis-tested” skill set as an activist in South L.A. in the 1990s. She’s also offered a rhetorical contrast to Caruso on issues related to crime, even though her policy solutions differ primarily in scale rather than in subject.
That said, they do appear to have different constituencies: A recent poll found that Bass leads among Democrats, women and white voters. Caruso, meanwhile, leads among Republicans and men. To figure out where Bass and Caruso might most appeal to voters, we dug into some 2020 election data to sketch out some “political neighborhoods.” Using the results of the presidential election, the Los Angeles County district attorney race and five local ballot measures, we broke L.A. down into six district areas:
To read more about the specific characteristics of these neighborhoods, check out our piece breaking them down.