One of several competitive U.S. House races in Southern California remains undecided more than two weeks after Election Day.
As of Friday morning, Democratic challenger Derek Tran was 480 votes ahead of Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in the 45th House District, which includes Garden Grove, Westminster, Buena Park and Artesia. Parts of Brea, Lakewood, Fullerton and Yorba Linda are in the district that’s shaped like a C and wraps around Anaheim.
Tran leads with 50.1% of the vote to Steel’s 49.9%.
The consumer rights attorney and co-owner of a pharmacy trailed in the Orange County portion of the district, but held an advantage in Los Angeles County.
Tran had not led in the vote count until Saturday, moving ahead by 36 votes after trailing by 11,363 the day after Election Day on Nov. 5. No ballots were counted Sunday.
It is not known how many ballots remain to be counted.
Steel easily advanced from the March primary in her race against four Democrats, including second-place primary finisher Tran. Tran had only 16 percent of the vote to Steel’s commanding 55 in the crowded primary.
This district supported Joe Biden for president in 2020, but voted for Republican John Cox over Gavin Newsom in the 2018 gubernatorial election. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans, but Steel defeated a Democrat in 2020 before winning re-election in 2022.
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District 45 re-elected Steel with 52.4% of the vote in 2022.
While Democrats hold every major statewide office and outnumber registered Republicans in California 2 to 1, there are pockets of strong support for Republican candidates in parts of Southern California.
California’s 54 Electoral College votes were projected to go to Vice President Kamala Harris shortly after polls closed Tuesday on election night, but county-by-county results show shifting support from the last presidential election in 2020 in several counties, including three in Southern California.
California mails every active registered voter in the state — all 22 million of them — a vote-by-mail ballot, a practice that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although only a fraction of them were returned, county elections offices still need to count millions of ballots statewide — a process that usually takes days, sometimes weeks, to complete.
Counties have 30 days to complete the canvass. That means counting every valid ballot and conducting a post-election audit. During that 30-day period, elections officials compare signatures on ballot envelopes to signatures on file.
The Secretary of State is then required to certify results.
