Good evening, it’s after 5PM on a weekday, and that means another update on how votes are being counted in Orange County’s close Congressional races.

A note about numbers today, while they look pretty good for dems, these numbers could have potentially been a lot better. Why? Well, supposedly GOP operatives watching the ballot counting have come out and decided to challenge every uncounted mail-in ballot signature simply based on whether said mail-in was from a voter who is a registered Democrat in CA-39 and CA-45.

For the most part, I do not believe these will substantially change the result and is merely a delay tactic, as these ballot signatures will need to be re-reviewed by the ROV, and most are frivolous challenges. Still, this is pretty ridiculous, and will simply make the already long ballot counting process even longer. Anyway, on to uncounted ballot numbers

Total estimated number of ballots to count (after Election Day): 441,011 Total estimated number of ballots counted (after Election Day): 138,116 Total Estimated Left to Count: 302,895

The ROV appears to have processed around 28K votes since the last update and Saturday, which is quite a bit less than previous updates. Effects of the Signature challenges, no doubt. We still have 300K votes to count as well!

**ANALYSIS**

CA-39

Great day for Cisneros, if he keeps netting votes in the 400 to 500 vote range until all the ballots are counted, he may actually end up with a majority in the Orange County portion of the district. Pretty amazing considering Young Kim was supposed to be a top-tier recruit, and Cisneros had some baggage coming into this election. I’m feeling confident this race will now turn out to be Cisneros’s to lose. Lean D

CA-45

Again, a good day for Porter, as this race has now narrowed to 2/5ths of a percentage point. Another day like this and Porter will be on the bubble or take the lead outright in the race, and likely never look back. I would have really sweaty palms if I were Mimi Walters right now. Then again, she may not even be paying attention, as she has other things on her mind. Lean D

CA-48

I’m not sure if I’ll keep adding analysis to these posts on CA-48, because I’m not sure what else there is to analyze, other than Rouda is on his way to hitting a 10K vote lead milestone. I might break down this race by city, and find where Rouda was weak, and where he overperformed, and I have a hunch he has perhaps taken the lead in a few edge cities (Huntington Beach, and Fountain Valley). D Gain

Another pretty good day for dems in Orange County. I’ll put up another post tomorrow shortly after 5PM with the latest numbers!