The contest between Representative Michelle Steel, Republican of California, and her Democratic challenger, Derek Tran, has become the tightest House race in the country, with margins hovering for days in the dozens of votes.
After Ms. Steel took a sizable lead of thousands of votes in the initial Election Day count two weeks ago, her advantage in the 45th Congressional District kept dwindling considerably as more ballots were tallied, until the race flipped.
Late last week, Ms. Steel led by 58 votes. Over the weekend, Mr. Tran went ahead by 36 votes. And on Tuesday, he extended his lead to 314 votes. Nearly 310,000 ballots have been cast overall.
While Republicans have already secured control of the House, the race will determine just how slim the party’s majority will be come January, when the new class of lawmakers is sworn in. If Mr. Tran wins, it would be the second California seat picked up this election by Democrats, a small victory amid a sea of national losses.
California is notoriously slow at counting because the vast majority of voters submit mail-in ballots and the state has a lengthy verification process along with laws that afford various protections to residents.
With thousands of ballots still to be counted in the district, both campaigns are focusing their efforts to “cure” ballots, or to fix rejected submissions on which a voter’s signature is missing or does not match the one on file.
