DEC 2 – Just thought we’d check one more time, even though Michelle has already conceded. Since last week Michelle gained 50 votes, Derek 65, and Derek is now up 615 votes (even though the Secretary of State hasn’t posted it yet.)
NOV 26 – where we keep on checking – did Team Derek jump the gun declaring victory yesterday?
LA results out 4:30 – Derek gained 20, Michelle 12, so Derek netted 8, he is up 589… waiting on OC results in 10 minutes! (at 5)
OC results at 5 – Derek gained 318, Michelle 294, so Derek netted 24, and he is UP BY 613! So, still looking good.
Breaking, November 25 – Derek has declared victory!
New story: Derek Tran Wins! And just as great, THE STEELS LOSE!
| *MICHELLE STEEL (REP) | OC: 142,219 LA: 14,822 | OC: 50.65% LA: 43.78% | STEEL TOTAL 157,041 | STEEL [-0.184%] 49.908% |
| DEREK TRAN (DEM) | OC: 138,586 LA: 19,036 | OC: 49.35% LA: 56.22% | TRAN TOTAL 157,622 [+581] | TRAN (/314,663) 50.092% |
Saturday 23 – Michelle gained 326 votes in OC, Derek gained 352 (with LA not reporting till Tuesday.) Derek’s lead now 581!
Friday 22 – Yes, no updates from LA till next Tuesday – they are probably running out of ballots to count, BUT Derek continues to make gains in OC! Derek’s tally in OC went from 137,540 to 138,540 for a gain of 499, while Michelle went from 141,274 to 141,734 for a gain of 460 – ergo, Derek got 39 more votes than Michelle since yesterday, and he is up by 519! (I didn’t make any mistakes this time did I?) The Register, which was dreaming of a “Red Wave in OC” last week, is just scratching their damn heads right now: “OC GOP Still Struggling in Purple County.” LOL…
[Thanks to Greg for updating this Wednesday while I was busy – Derek’s lead has gone up to 397 with just OC updating – LA’s not updating again till this afternoon (Thursday.) See comment below with LA’s schedule]
THURSDAY – TRAN UP BY 480 — SHOWING MY WORK! (Greg)
LOS ANGELES COUNTY: UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE, 45th District
| Candidate(s) | Votes | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| DEREK TRAN (D) | 19,036 | 56.22% |
| MICHELLE STEEL (R) | 14,822 | 43.78% |
ORANGE COUNTY: UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE, 45th District
| Candidate(s) | Votes | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| DEREK TRAN (D) | 137,540 | 49.33% |
| MICHELLE STEEL (R) | 141,274 | 50.67% |
| Candidate(s) | Votes | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| DEREK TRAN (D) | 137,540 + 19,036 = 156,576 | 156,576 / 312,672 = 50.07676% |
| MICHELLE STEEL (R) | 141,274 + 14,822 = 156,096 | 156,096 / 312,672 = 49.92324% |
Thank you for playing, Rep. Steel! Worse luck next time!
TRAN: 134,877 + 18,947 = 153,824 = 50.01626%
STEEL: 138,971 + 14,751 = 153,722 = 49.98374%
The Voice of OC has posted LA’s reporting schedule. LA is not such hard workers as our folks in OC. https://content.lavote.gov/docs/rrcc/documents/canvass-update-schedule-11052024-11-19.pdf
LA will report new results today (Thursday) between 4 and 5… and then not again till next Tuesday, the 26th. Then Friday the 29th, Monday Dec. 2, and their final results Tuesday the 3rd.
Between whining about fraud, Republicans keep predicting or fantasizing a huge batch of late Steel votes. Greg, do you think there is any substance to that possibility?
Probably not a decisive batch, but it’s the later-posted absentees that are the most blue and they are not the absolutely last counted. Paper ballots, damaged ballots, and provisional ballots, if I remember correctly, come later –and all can be inclined to the paranoid (which favors Steel) and the transient (like, people who moved and didn’t re-register), which favors Steel.
Steel is ballot-curing, so Tran voters should continue doing the same. I think that it turning around again is unlikely — but not impossible.
Thursday, November 21st:
TRAN: 156576
STEEL: 156096
TRAN ahead by: 480
Apparently there are approximately 13986 votes to count.
Sorry, apparently AP changed their estimates on the remaining vote from a few days ago. They are saying that 97.9% of the vote is counted. That now means that approximately 6706 votes are remaining.
And all in that district?
That estimate was from AP and is the whole district, both LA and OC. I extrapolated the remaining votes from that which has already been cast and their 97.9% estimate.
For including LA County, the 4 hrs seems awfully short. They really are nursing that time right up to Dec…..
Analysis: LA is almost out of ballots and CA-45 is a small sliver of that county, so I’d expect only a small increase in Tran’s margin at best.
CA-45 is obviously a much larger portion of OC. As of today, 1,064,499 votes for Congress have been counted. As noted above, 312,672 have been cast in this race. That’s 29.37%. The percentage that will actually come from this race — and bear in mind that many provisional ballots, for example, might not end up counting — may vary from that, but that percentage is a pretty good guess of what to expect. (It could be improved upon laboriously, but we’re not getting paid for this so forget it.)
If there are indeed 6,706 ballots left to count in OC, we’d thus expect 1970 to come from CA-45. If Steel picks up 1.33% of them — her current lead over Tran, and not the best estimate because it includes the Precint Zero dump at the beginning (and this is exactly why I wanted to document that!) — then she’d expect to pick up … 26 ballots. That is considerably less than 480. So, while ballot curing should definitely continue just in case, the odds are very much in Tran’s favor.
Steel’s lead among the 198,917 votes in this race in the Precinct Zero ballots was 6.60%. Her lead among all ballots is — well, non-existent. Tran leads.
Steel’s OC votes include 106,121 from Precinct Zero and 35,153 from afterwards.
Tran’s OC votes include 92,796 from Precinct Zero and 44,744 from afterwards.
So if one believes that the best estimate of the remaining OC votes to be counted are the 79,897 that did not make it into Precinct Zero, then Tran got 56% of them. That’s a 12-point margin! I do believe that — and so that’s what I’d expect him to get from the remaining OC votes. If all of those votes count in this race — and they likely won’t because of people leaving it blank and such — and then Tran will pick up around 1103 votes and Steel 867 — adding 236 to his final total in addition to what he picks up in LA.
Cure votes anyway. Shawn Steel has a lot of money left to spend!
The estimate from AP was just for this race, so those 6706 are left just for the Tran/Steel contest. What I’ve noticed over the last week in both LA and OC is that as the votes are counted, more go toward Tran than Steel. So I agree the odds appear in Tran’s favor. OC reports more today, so will be interesting to see if the trend is continuing. As long as Tran keeps eroding Steel’s lead in OC, he is in good shape.
Although not OC, looks like District 13 may turn blue. Only about 200 votes behind the incumbent and most the votes left are in counties that trend blue. Will be close.
That would be great news, we gotta keep that
RepublicanMAGA majority as slim as possible!I suspect that Shawn Steel is going to spring for a recount, even though Tran’s final lead may be around 700 votes. Part of this is hope and part of it is spite.
The question of when to call a race is still hotly debated by both campaigns and the media. If we say somewhat arbitrarily that at this point Tran’s chances of winning are 99% — or even 99.9% — does that justify calling the race? (Which, as Zenger notes, doesn’t really matter.) For a winning campaign, it probably does; for a trailing campaign it probably doesn’t. (Al Gore found this out in 2000 when he prematurely conceded the Presidential election and then walked it back, while Republicans chanted “no backsies!”) For the media, we’re probably past the reasonable tipping point — but with Trump’s victory it costs the media little (and probably gains them eyeballs) to ostentatiously delay the call.
So everybody is doing what they should be doing, including a small fry like us!
A recount would be hugely expensive and wouldn’t change a 700 vote outcome. Steel is a greedy, racist little bastard, but he isn’t stupid.
That was my first take as well, but then I noted that Iowa’s 1st District — which has an 800 vote margin and after a recount two years ago was decided by six votes — is headed for a recount as well, so the current thinking may be that the maximum number one can take on is larger than the previous rule of thumb.
Can one really put a price on fighting as hard as possible in the interest of marital comity — especially when someone had too little faith in his wife to lure in a second Republican to achieve a Red-on-Red runoff? Isn’t that what one’s money is for? Apparently it’s not for paying staffers. Which reminds me: if any stiffed Steel staffers want to take legal action against that deadbeat sumbitch, even at the cost of not becoming part of the next flock of Steven Millers (gack!), I know an attorney who might be interested!