Derek Tran maintains lead over Michelle Steel as vote counts trickle in

Democrat Derek Tran maintained his slim lead over incumbent Republican Rep. Michelle Steel on Tuesday in the 45th Congressional District after declaring victory earlier in the day.

New vote tallies from Orange and L.A. counties on Tuesday showed Tran expanding his lead to 613 votes over Steel, a margin he said was too large for her to overcome to win the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Mathematically, it looks like it would be pretty hard for her to be able to take the lead and we feel confident and comfortable declaring victory,” Tran told LAist.

Tran's lead grew by 32 votes from the vote tally on Monday.

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Tran now has 157,960 votes to Steel's 157,347.

Close to 1% of the estimated vote total remains to be counted in one of three remaining House races that have yet to be called.

A phone call from LAist to Steel’s spokesperson went unreturned.

How we got here

The Democrat took the lead over Steel by 36 votes on Nov. 16. In a little more than a week, his lead increased to more than 500 votes.

The two other undecided races are Iowa's 1st Congressional District and California's 13th House district in the San Joaquin Valley. In the California 13th race, Democrat Adam Gray has taken the lead over GOP Rep. John Duarte. Gray leads Duarte by 182 votes. In the Iowa race, the Republican incumbent Mariannette Miller-Meeks leads Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan by 800 votes.

Steel was beating Tran the day after the election, leading by more than 5 percentage points. But her lead steadily declined as more ballots were counted.

The shift has prompted some people to claim voter fraud. Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed Democrats were “stealing a House seat right from under us.” Elon Musk reshared a tweet that said California was “corrupt as hell.”

Experts said shifts during the counting process are normal.

“This is a process that happens every election cycle,” said Paul Mitchell, whose firm, Political Data Inc., tracks vote trends. “We’ve had elections that haven’t been called for an entire month after the election because they were so close.”

According to Mitchell’s analysis, Democrats had a 5.1% advantage over Republicans with ballots cast before Election Day and Republicans had a 15% advantage with ballots cast in-person on Nov. 5.

With late arriving and other ballots counted after Election Day, Democrats had an 18.5% advantage, Mitchell said, explaining Tran's growing lead over Steel.

Republicans control the House with 219 seats. Democrats have 213.

Steel is a two-term incumbent. Tran, a lawyer, is the son of refugees who fled Communist Vietnam as part of a group that became known as the “boat people.”

Tran is hoping to become the first Vietnamese American to represent the district, which also includes Little Saigon.

The district straddles Los Angeles and Orange Counties and covers 17 cities, including Garden Grove, Buena Park, and Fountain Valley, and Cerritos as well as parts of Fullerton and Lakewood.

Could there be a recount?

How recounts work: Unlike other states, California doesn’t have an automatic recount threshold. State election law allows any voter to request a recount for any contest as long as they pay for it. For most races, this has to be done within five days after the election is officially certified (that’s by Dec. 5).

For statewide or cross-county elections, that request can only be done within five days after Dec. 6. California law also allows the governor to order a state-funded recount for any statewide office or ballot measure if the difference is less than 1,000 votes.