The Abridged version:
With election officials still counting votes, incumbent U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui holds an almost 15 percentage point lead over Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang.
Vang’s campaign said it’s depending on late ballots skewing in the challenger’s favor.
It would not be surprising if Matsui’s lead narrows, a political data expert said. But it may not narrow enough for Vang to win.
After Election Day, U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui held almost 15% more of the votes counted than challenger Mai Vang in the race to represent the 7th Congressional District.
But as officials keep counting votes, the question lingers: Could Vang topple Matsui’s lead?
Vang’s campaign says her “pathway to victory” lies in how many supporters voted late, close to Election Day, as those votes are typically counted later.
Matsui’s campaign is “not going to predict what the numbers are going to look like,” said Roger Salazar, a strategist with the campaign. “But we’d rather be in our spot than in theirs.”
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The trickle of results from thousands of ballots that election officials are still tallying may feel like an anticlimactic conclusion to the energetic and brutal battle for District 7, which includes parts of Sacramento, El Dorado and San Joaquin counties.
National politics-watchers see the race as an indicator of a possible shift in the Democratic Party toward younger, more progressive politicians, with Vang, a Sacramento City Council member, representing the progressive wing and two-decade representative Matsui representing long-established Democrats.
But in the Sacramento region, the race may also reflect how each candidate wielded their power among their Sacramento-area supporters, and approached connecting with communities in the Sierra Nevada foothills and in northern San Joaquin County.
The results of their efforts will become clearer in coming days. Sacramento County plans to release updated vote counts Friday afternoon, and San Joaquin County plans to release them Friday evening, according to their registrars of voters’ websites.
El Dorado County plans to release results twice a week following election night, according to its registrar’s site.
U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui speaks to the media outside Sellands restaurant in Sacramento on Nov. 3, 2026. (Martin Christian)
Finding a path
As of Wednesday, Matsui held a 14.8% — or nearly 19,500-vote — advantage over Vang.
But many haven’t been counted yet. In Sacramento County, 39% have been counted, while officials in El Dorado County have counted 48%, according to the Associated Press. In San Joaquin County, 37% of votes have been tallied.
Matsui is leading in all three, with leads in the 60% range in El Dorado and San Joaquin, according to The New York Times.
Political data consultant Paul Mitchell broke down the numbers Vang might need to surpass Matsui.
Holding about 43% of the vote currently, Vang “probably has to win all the remaining ballots at like 68%,” Mitchell said Wednesday.
As for how that could happen, Mitchell’s view echoed the Vang campaign: the candidate’s base would need to tend toward late voting.
“The steelman case for Mai Vang being able to win would be that we know that early voters are going to be many more homeowners, they’re going to be more affluent, more establishment,” — likely Matsui voters, he said.
“The ones who voted later were going to be the younger renter, more diverse, more (Democratic Socialists of America)-type voters,” more likely to choose Vang, he said.
In a less ideal case for Vang — and a more favorable one for Matsui — “Vang will continue to gain as we get later ballots, but closing 14 points after a day or two might start to look like it’s too steep of a hill to climb,” he said.
Mai Vang hugs her husband Omar Gonzalez at an election night party at Midtown Live in Sacramento on Nov. 3, 2026. (Martin Christian)
Appealing to the rural base
The outcome depends significantly on how the candidates resonated with people in western El Dorado County, in places like Placerville, and in northern San Joaquin County, including Lodi.
Large swaths of both counties joined the new District 7 after California voters passed the redistricting measure Proposition 50. The district previously included primarily Sacramento and Yolo County territory.
In El Dorado, Matsui looked to connect with voters over their worries about wildfire risk. And in San Joaquin, she could relate to farmers due to her childhood on a family farm, Salazar said.
“You basically had to reintroduce yourself to voters, and introduce yourself to newer voters,” he said about the effect of redistricting on the race.
“You had to do that not just in those new regions, but also, because we hadn’t had a campaign like this in a while, you had to do that with the base region as well,” he said.
“It wasn’t a waste of a message to retell your story. The key was it provided us an opportunity to build from scratch, like, ‘Heres’ who we are.’”
For her part, in El Dorado and San Joaquin counties Vang highlighted her message of not accepting donations from corporate political action committees, focusing on families’ rising costs and helping farmers affected by tariffs, campaign spokesman Jonathan Tran said.
In Lodi, which includes large Latino and South Asian communities, her campaign worked to connect with voters in different languages, he said.
Mai Vang addresses the crowd at an election night party at Midtown Live in Sacramento on Nov. 3, 2026. (Martin Christian)
Campaigning outside Sacramento
San Joaquin County Democratic Party chair Manuel Zapata recalled both candidates campaigning in Lodi, he said Wednesday. Both candidates held parties in supporters’ homes, he said.
In Lodi, Matsui also had the support of Lodi City Councilmember and Mayor Pro Tempore Mikey Hothi, who helped her campaign, Zapata said.
Though the race is far from over, both campaigns told Abridged by PBS KVIE what they believe has differentiated their strategies so far.
Doris Matsui speaks to the media at election night party at Sellands restaurant in Sacramento on Nov. 3, 2026. (Martin Christian)
“I think both campaigns leaned into exactly what their messaging was,” Salazar said.
“Doris focusing on experience and bringing … the experience she’s had delivering for the region to the table, I think had an appeal to a broad section of voters.”
Salazar added, “Mai stuck to her guns and really sort of focused on the progressive aspects of the campaign.”
Tran reminded voters: “It’s impossible to talk about this election without describing the amount of money that’s been spent … the amount of outside money that poured in to come after Mai is pretty unprecedented for a person that’s been in office for 21 years.” Matsui has occupied her seat since 2005.
But Tran said Vang “(leaned) into the grit and the energy of a grassroots movement.”
“I think the energy we saw in this race is something incredibly rare in this region,” he said.