More than a week after Election Day, less than 100 votes separate Rep. Michelle Steel and Derek Tran in the race for California’s 45th congressional district, as of the latest vote tally posted by the secretary of state Friday, Nov. 15.
While Steel still has a razor-thin lead, Tran has slashed away at it in the nail-biter race. Thursday’s tally had Steel up by 236 votes. On Friday, her lead shrunk to a mere 58.
The Southern California race is currently the closest in the state that has yet to be called.
Of the votes tallied Friday, Tran, a Democrat, clinched around 64% of the results from Los Angeles County, which makes up a small part of the district, while nearly 59% of those results on Friday from Orange County swung in his favor.
Steel, the Republican incumbent seeking a third term, was leading by more than 11,000 votes the day after Election Day, but a steady stream of blue ballots counted since that earlier tally has allowed Tran to slash away at her lead.
While Steel’s previous election victories have shown Republican resilience in a Democratic-leaning district — one that President Joe Biden won in 2020 — the current vote count suggests that Democrats are gaining ground.
The race against Tran is Steel’s toughest battle yet; in 2022, she won reelection by nearly 5%.
The race has been trending in Tran’s favor, and it’s likely he could flip the district by a narrow margin, said Christian Grose, a pollster and professor of political science at USC.
However, the margin is tight enough that Steel could still pull off a win, he added.
Both campaigns have prepared for the possibility of a recount in the race, soliciting donations to legal funds from their supporters in recent days. Secretary of State Shirley Weber said if there is a recount — and it yields a different outcome — then local elections officials in both Orange and Los Angeles counties would be required to recertify their results.
Tran is in Washington, D.C., this week for new member orientation, despite not clinching a congressional victory as of yet. If elected, he would become the first Vietnamese American to represent Orange County’s Little Saigon in Congress.
All of the other five congressional races that touch Orange County have already been called. If Tran does unseat Steel, Rep. Young Kim, R-Anaheim Hills, would be the only Republican House member to represent an Orange County district.
