This is something I’ve been watching since election day because whoever wins in CA-48 will be my congressional representative. Right now, Democrat Harley Rouda is trailing Republican Michelle Steel by just under 5,000 votes. That’s up slightly as of yesterday but the race still hasn’t been called.
According to Orange County Registrar of Voters’ returns as of 5 p.m. Thursday, Steel, a Republican from Surfside who serves as chairwoman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, had 179,452 votes — 4,774 more than Rouda’s 174,678.
All precincts had reported in, but the registrar had an estimated 175,516 ballots left to count countywide.
“We feel good about where things stand but will continue monitoring as more results come in,” Lance Trover, Steel’s campaign spokesman, said on Wednesday.
Rouda, the Democrat, won the seat from longtime Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in 2018. So a win by Steel would flip the seat back.
According to the NY Times, Democrats have so far flipped 3 seats in the House and Republicans have flipped 8 for a net gain of +5. That leaves 28 seats yet to be called and as of now, the GOP is leading in 19 of those races. Some of those races are incredibly tight. CA-25 has Republican incumbent Mike Garcia leading Democrat Christy Smith by 432 votes out of nearly 300,000 cast.
But the closest House race in the country right now is Iowa-2. This is a seat vacated by a retiring Democrat. At the moment, Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks is leading Democrat Rita Hart by 246 votes out of nearly 400,000 cast.
Even if Republicans win every seat they are currently leading they won’t control the house, but they could be close enough to make things extremely difficult for Nancy Pelosi.
