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Rep. Jeff Van Drew infuriated Democrats when he ditched the party and joined the Republicans, but their Kennedy-powered bid to reclaim his South Jersey congressional district trailed narrowly as ballots continued to be counted Wednesday.

Van Drew was leading Democrat Amy Kennedy — the latest member of the fabled clan to seek public office — by roughly 7,000 votes, 51 percent to 48 percent, with 75 percent of counties reporting.

However, there are likely still tens of thousands of votes yet to be counted. Many of those are expected to come in from parts of the district near Delaware Bay that are more favorable to Kennedy, election returns showed as of 1 p.m. Wednesday.

The Associated Press has not yet called the race.

But that didn’t stop Van Drew from declaring victory late Tuesday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. 

“This was a hard and a brutal election,” Van Drew told cheering supporters inside a pub in Sea Isle City. “A lot of money and a lot of power was used against me, quite frankly. We had a difficult year. The truth is, we believed. We believed in America.”

It’s the latest twist in a race that’s repeatedly upset the norms in South Jersey politics.

Van Drew’s party switch in 2019 enraged Democrats — Gov. Phil Murphy called the lawmaker a “traitor” on Election Day — who vowed to retake the seat.

That led to a nasty primary fight between two feuding factions in South Jersey politics.

George Norcross, an insurance magnate and local power broker, backed Brigid Callahan Harrison, while Murphy backed Kennedy, who had never run for office before.

Kennedy, the wife of former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, was seeking to be the only member of the Kennedy clan left serving in Washington, after her cousin-in-law Joe Kennedy III lost the Senate primary in Massachusetts.