They're still counting ballots in California's 45th District, one of three U.S. House districts where a winner hasn't yet been projected. Last night, the two counties that are (partially) covered by the 45th District, Los Angeles and Orange, both reported new results, and they extended Democrat Derek Tran's lead over Republican Rep. Michelle Steel from 397 votes to 480 votes. There hasn't been a day that has resulted in more new ballots counted for Steel than for Tran since Nov. 6, so the trends here are favorable for Tran. However, there's no guarantee that those trends will continue, and with about 6,000 ballots left to process (according to my rough calculations), this race is still up in the air.

ABC News reports that Republican Dave McCormick is projected to defeat Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race. Casey conceded the race on Thursday. The not-yet-finalized results from Pennsylvania give McCormick about a 0.2-point lead, 48.8% to 48.6% — a raw vote lead of about 16,000 votes out of nearly 7 million cast. McCormick's victory over the three-term incumbent is a moderate upset, as 538's forecast gave him about a 3 in 10 shot of winning. With this projection, Republicans are set to have a 53-to-47 majority in the Senate at the start of the 119th Congress.

ABC News reports that Republican Nick Begich is projected to win Alaska's at-large U.S. House seat. The Last Frontier counted its last ballots yesterday, and Begich received 48.4% of the first-place votes, Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola received 46.4%, Alaska Independence Party candidate John Wayne Howe received 3.9%, and Democrat Eric Hafner received 1.0%.

However, because no candidate received a majority of first-place votes, ranked-choice voting was required to determine the winner. (In Alaska, voters can rank the four candidates on the ballot in order of preference.) Hafner was eliminated first because he got the fewest first-place votes, and his votes were redistributed to his voters' second choices. Then, Howe was eliminated, and the same thing happened to his voters. At that point, Begich had 51.3% of the vote and Peltola had 48.7%, making Begich the winner.

Begich's victory means that Republicans have won at least 219 House seats in the 2024 election, although the GOP caucus is temporarily down a member because former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was reelected on Nov. 5, resigned on Nov. 13. Democrats, meanwhile, will have at least 213 seats. We're down to only three unprojected seats now!

P.S. Alaska being done counting also means that we have a final unofficial result for Ballot Measure 2, the initiative to repeal ranked-choice voting in the state. It's currently losing by just 664 votes. However, supporters of the measure are expected to request a recount, so the repeal effort hasn't definitively failed yet.

ABC News is reporting that Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur is projected to win reelection in Ohio's 9th District against Republican Derek Merrin. It was certainly a close-run thing for the incumbent, however: Kaptur leads by just over 0.6 points, 48.3% to 47.6%, which puts her lead a touch above the 0.5-point threshold necessary for a recount. With this projection, only four races have not yet been reported as projected: Alaska's at-large District, California's 13th District, California's 45th District and Iowa's 1st District. Chances are that Republicans will end up with somewhere between 220 and 222 seats, and Democrats will hold around 213 to 215 seats once all is said and done — nearly identical to the GOP's 221-214 edge entering the election.