Democratic incumbent Loretta Sanchez will once again represent California's 47th Congressional district.
Early ballots showed almost a dead heat between Sanchez and Republican Assemblyman Van Tran. With 100 percent of the precincts now reporting, Sanchez finished with 51 percent of the vote to Tran's 42 percent.
Sanchez has been a political powerhouse, taking at least 60 percent of the vote since 1998 and 70 percent of the vote in the most recent election in 2008.
The district largely favored Republican candidates in the '80s, but a shift of support for Bill Clinton in 1996 also gave Sanchez the edge she needed to win over conservative incumbent Bob Dornan. Today, the district is 69 percent Hispanic, who largely support Sanchez and Democratic leaders.
Republicans hoped to change the dynamics of this year's election, nominating Tran in hopes that he could rally the almost 10 percent Vietnamese population of the district.
Tran's cause might have been helped due to a remark made by Sanchez in a Univision interview where she said, "the Vietnamese and the Republicans are, with an intensity, (trying) to take this seat." In the interview, Sanchez also called Tran anti-Hispanic.
The comments caused a backlash against Sanchez, where she was called racist.
Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant asked for an apology and countered saying that the 47th Congressional district belongs to the people and not an individual ethnicity.
Sanchez later released a statement qualifying her comments as referring to members of the Vietnamese community who are supporting Tran and not the Vietnamese population as a whole.
