Republican Michelle Steel still leads Democrat Derek Tran, narrowly, in California's 45th congressional race

Hanna Kang, The Orange County Register on Nov 14, 2024

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LOS ANGELES — More than a week after Election Day, Republican Rep. Michelle Steel is still holding on to her razor-thin lead over Derek Tran in the race for California’s 45th congressional district, as of the latest vote tally posted by the secretary of state Thursday, Nov. 14.

But Tran has further cut into her lead in the nail-biter race. Wednesday’s tally had Steel up by 349 votes. On Thursday, her lead shrunk to just 236.

The Southern California race is currently the closest in the state that has yet to be called.

Of the votes tallied Thursday, Tran, a Democrat, clinched 62% of the results from Los Angeles County, which makes up a small part of the district, while 53% of those results on Thursday 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.

As of Thursday evening, the Orange County registrar of voters said it had counted more than 1.3 million ballots and estimated that there were more than 74,000 ballots left to process countywide. In Los Angeles County, an estimated 99,400 ballots need to be processed still, according to its elections official.

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.

Neither Steel’s nor Tran’s campaigns commented on the latest vote tallies Thursday evening.

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.

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