Raman Hits 99% on Kalshi After Bass Entered Election Day as Favorite

Dek: With $142 million traded, the Los Angeles mayor’s market has swung sharply toward Nithya Raman as she leads the count. The reversal shows why pre-election forecasts, live odds and race calls are different things.

Kalshi traders favored incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass heading into Election Day.

Two days later, they are almost certain City Councilmember Nithya Raman will replace her.

Raman is now trading at 99% in the Los Angeles mayor’s market, with $142 million in volume, as of Thursday morning. That compares with Bass at 58% on $108.5 million in trading in DeFi Rate’s Election Day guide.

The reversal follows actual returns. Raman leads Bass 405,193 votes to 379,069, 51.7% to 48.3%, with approximately 72% of the expected vote counted. NBC News still listed the race as too early to call in its latest reviewed update.

The distinction matters: Traders have moved decisively, but the count remains unfinished. The outstanding votes have already been cast, but they still need to be counted.

Bass was the favorite, not a forecast landslide

Bass’s pre-election market recovery was real, but it never made her a secure winner.

The incumbent entered Tuesday at 58%, up from approximately 38% a month earlier. The candidates had exchanged the market lead three times during October, with Bass most recently moving ahead Oct. 28.

Polling offered less separation.

An earlier Berkeley IGS/Los Angeles Times survey put Raman ahead 39% to 28%, with roughly one-third undecided. The final survey showed a 40%-40% tie and 19% undecided. As DeFi Rate noted before voting began, that was a polling tie alongside a modest market advantage for Bass, not evidence of a decisive lead.

If Raman wins, the candidate favored in that Election Day snapshot will have lost. That is a meaningful result to record when assessing the market’s performance.

But a 58% probability also left a 42% chance of Bass losing. An underdog victory would not, by itself, establish that the probability was mathematically unreasonable. It would establish that the less-favored outcome occurred.

Returns changed the information traders were pricing

The count initially favored Bass before shifting toward Raman.

ABC7 reported Bass ahead by nearly 10,000 votes with approximately 49% of the expected vote counted. Subsequent overnight results put Raman narrowly ahead, and later batches widened her lead.

The latest reviewed figures give Raman a 26,124-vote advantage. NBC estimated approximately 305,000 votes remained and calculated that Bass would need about 54.3% of them to catch or overtake her. That calculation depends on the estimate of outstanding votes, which can change.

The market is therefore assessing a different problem than it was Tuesday morning.

Before voting ended, traders weighed polling, turnout expectations, campaign developments, and assumptions about undecided voters. Now they can incorporate actual returns, the size of the lead, and judgments about the ballots still outstanding.

A market can be useful at incorporating that new information while having favored the eventual loser beforehand. Those are separate measures of performance.

A 99% price is still not a race call

Raman’s current probability expresses overwhelming trader confidence. It is not a formal declaration that she has won.

That distinction is particularly visible here: Kalshi’s supplied snapshot has Raman at 99%, while NBC’s reviewed results page still says “too early to call.” Those assessments serve different purposes and apply different standards.

The remaining count also should not be treated as a random sample that must reproduce the votes already reported. A comeback would depend on how the outstanding ballots divide, not simply on whether a large number remains.

Bass has a numerical route under NBC’s estimate, but traders appear to consider it highly unlikely. Without a detailed breakdown of the outstanding ballots and the market’s trading activity, the quoted probability alone cannot establish why they have reached that judgment.

Nor can the probability guarantee they are right.

More trading does not turn odds into results

An additional $33.5 million has traded since the $108.5 million Election Day snapshot, bringing the supplied total to $142 million.

That is substantial activity. It is not an independent vote count or a representative survey of Los Angeles residents. The same contracts can change hands repeatedly, and volume does not reveal how many distinct traders contributed to the price.

It also does not make a market immune to error. A heavily traded contract still reflects positions taken under uncertainty.

The lesson is in the timestamps

The Los Angeles race offers a concrete example of the distinction DeFi Rate emphasized before the election: probabilities are not vote shares, promises or official calls.

At 58%, Bass was a modest favorite before the count. At 99%, Raman is an overwhelming favorite after substantial results have arrived. Neither number predicts the percentage of votes its candidate will receive.

The race is not yet settled, so the pre-election assessment cannot receive its final score. But the reversal already illustrates the central point: markets can update quickly without having anticipated the result correctly in advance.

The key is timing. A forecast before ballots are counted and a near-certain price after most results arrive may concern the same election, but they are not the same forecasting achievement.