Carbajal, a Democrat, faces his Republican challenger Thomas Cole, who is seeking his fifth two-year term in the House.

With no precincts yet reported, Carbajal had 93,203 votes, or 64.2%, to Cole's 51,887 votes, or 35.8%, according to the secretary of state's office.

The early returns are mail-in ballots that were received and tabulated before Election Day. The results of individual districts were not yet known at the time of this writing.

The 24th District represents a heavily liberal area for decades and includes all of Santa Barbara County, including the Channel Islands, most of San Luis Obispo County, and part of northern Ventura County, including Ojai and Ventura.

Cole and Carbajal reached the November runoff as the two most voters in a three-vote primary that also included Democrat Helena Pasquarella.

Carbajal, the son of migrant farmworkers, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Santa Barbara resident, was first elected to the 24th District in 2017 when congressional predecessor Lois Capps retired and has been facing challenges ever since around the seat survived.

Prior to his election to Congress, Carbajal served on the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, having been elected in 2005 when Supervisor Naomi Schwartz retired. He was her chief of staff for 12 years.

Cole, a Los Angeles native who now lives in Montecito after 35 years in Santa Barbara, is running for public office for the first time, although he managed his son Charles Cole's campaign in his unsuccessful bid for a state Assembly seat in 2020 .

After working for seven years in his family business that analyzes election trends, he said it was a good time to run because the nation is as fractured as it was in the 1960s and needs a change in leadership.