US polls: Bera confident of winning Sacramento County seat

Indian-American Congressman Ami Bera is confident of winning the SacramentoCounty seat after gaining more than 1,650 votes over his Republican opponent in the polls, with several thousand ballots still to be counted.

With this, the lawmaker has reduced the deficit by just 530 votes.

Bera is the only serving Indian-American in the current Congress and on the election day of November 4 he was trailing behind by several thousand vote against his Republican challenger Doug Ose.

With many votes left to tally, the race for California’s 7th Congressional District is still too close to call. “Today was a good day. As I’ve said since this process began, the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters is staffed by professionals and we need to let them do their jobs and ensure every vote is counted,” Bera said in a statement.

“Once all the counting is done, I’m confident I will be representing SacramentoCounty in the 114th Congress,” Bera said with confidence.

Ballots that have not yet been counted include some vote by mail ballots and provisional ballots. In both 2010 and 2012, those same types of ballots significantly favoured Bera.

In 2012, Bera’s race was too close to call immediately after the election, but after the registrar of voters counted those types of ballots, Bera won by a margin of 9,191 votes.

At the closing of counting of votes on Monday evening, the Sacramento County said Ose had 76,133 votes as against 75,603 votes of Bera. The counting of votes is expected to continue for the next several days.

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