One of the lawyers helping out David Harmer, Republican candidate for Congress in California’s 11th congressional district, writes in with an update . . .

[Incumbent Democrat Jerry] McNerney is up by 2269 votes, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. McNerney’s strongest counties (Santa Clara — 52/43 and Alameda — 56/42) have both nearly fully reported. Alameda is completely done (that’s where I’ve been working for the campaign as a volunteer attorney) and Santa Clara has a handful left.
The remaining ballots — of which there are tens of thousands — are in Harmer’s strongest two counties, San Joaquin and Contra Costa. Harmer won both counties. In CC, he won by slightly less than 1%, and in San Joaquin, he won 49-44-7, with 7% going to the AIP candidate Dave Christenson.
Notably, it is highly unlikely that 7% of vote-by-mail ballots will be going to Christenson. These are voters who took time at home to carefully go through their ballots and then had the energy to bring them in on election day. These aren’t people who throw their votes away. And if Harmer can push Christenson’s total down to somewhere around 4-5% in SJ County, and keep the 1% margin in CC County, the election should be his.
SJ will update today around 4 PM, and more tomorrow. Contra Costa still has ballots to count this week, as well as provisionals starting next week. If I had to guess, I think Harmer will be up by the end of the day tomorrow, and then it’s a tossup as Contra Costa counts write in ballots.
For now though, Harmer needs funds and has sent out a contribution link here.

McNerney is declaring victory, insisting that his 1,681-vote lead cannot be toppled with the remaining 11,000 ballots. Indeed, America, these are the math skills that have made our budget what it is today. (The 2,269-vote margin mentioned by my correspondent is the less recent figure.)