Democrat Tran widens lead to 314 votes over GOP's Steel in 45th House District race

Democratic challenger Derek Tran continued to widen his lead over Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in what’s become the closest House race in the nation, according to vote counts released late Tuesday.

He had 155,090 votes to Steel’s 154,776 for a lead of 314 votes.

Tran led by 36 votes Friday and 102 votes Monday in the 45th Congressional District, which includes parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Several thousand votes have yet to be counted.

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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 election day.

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 218 seats. Democrats have 212. Five House races have yet to be called, including two in California. Besides the 45th, the 13th District, covering the northern part of the Central Valley, remains undecided.

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.

Race is one of 5 still being decided

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 requesta 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.

LAist senior editor George Kiriyama and reporter Cato Hernández contributed to this report.