On Thursday, Democrats Katie Hobbs and Mark Kelly widened their leads in the Arizona governor and senate contests, respectively. However, Republican insiders believe that Kari Lake and other statewide candidates may receive positive news.
Hobbs is in the lead with 50.7% compared to 49.3% for Lake, while Kelly is ahead with 51.7% compared to 46.1% for Masters as of Friday morning.
Maricopa County, which reported the unofficial results of over 79,000 more ballots, was the only county to report a significant ballot decline.
According to ABC15 Arizona’s Garrett Archer, county authorities stated that these ballots were cast before to Election Day, notably on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. In the campaign for governor, the results were 54.8 percent for Hobbs and 45.1 percent for Lake. It broke 55.7 percent for Kelly and 42.6 percent for Masters in the senate election.
Maricopa County has tabulated 78,869 ballots received prior to ED.
Batch breakdown
Governor@KariLake 45.2@katiehobbs 54.8Senate@bgmasters 42.6@CaptMarkKelly 55.7
AZSOS@RealMarkFinchem 42.8@Adrian_Fontes 57.2
AZAG@AbrahamHamadeh 45.6@krismayes 54.4
— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 11, 2022
There were multiple claims that the 17,000 “Box 3” votes from Election Day, which were transferred to the downtown Phoenix elections facility for processing due to technological difficulties, will be counted on Thursday. At a news conference on Thursday, the county acknowledged that they would not be included in that evening’s tally.
This number is based on the estimate from Archer minus the vote drop in Maricopa County on Thursday night. Nearly half a million ballots remain to be posted statewide.
AZ outstanding non-provisional ballot estimate as of 7:45pm
State: 571,813
Apache 8,500
Cochise 8,662
Coconino 12,231
Gila 269
Graham 118
La Paz 1,972
Maricopa 407,664
Mohave 10,600
Pima 114,203
Pinal 16,281
Yavapai 12,458
Yuma 9,180— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 11, 2022
340-350 thousand ballots remain in Maricopa County, according to a Thursday evening press release. A significant portion of these are absentee ballots dropped off at polling places on Election Day.
INBOX: Maricopa County has an estimated 340-350k votes left. pic.twitter.com/aPL1Q8Jv15
— Cameron Arcand (@cameron_arcand) November 11, 2022
Republicans are hopeful that the remaining ballots, which are essentially Election Day votes, would fall in their favor. Thursday night, Republican political strategist Landon Wall revealed his rationale in a thread.
1) Dozens of high quality polls indicated Republicans overwhelmingly intended to vote in person, and many of those intended to fill out an early ballot and walk it in on Election Day because they did not trust the post office and viewed that interchangeably with voting in person
— Landon Wall (@LandonWall_) November 11, 2022
2) Donald Trump won E day late earlies in Pima and Maricopa. Voting patterns are way closer to 2020 than they are 2018. They are a world away from 2018, we live in an absolutely different political reality.
— Landon Wall (@LandonWall_) November 11, 2022
“This was the last batch from Maricopa that was set to massively favor Hobbs and she underperformed in a big way. The stage is set for tomorrow when the early ballots dropped off on Election Day begin to be counted which will favor Kari Lake. Game on,” Wall said.
“1) Dozens of high quality polls indicated Republicans overwhelmingly intended to vote in person, and many of those intended to fill out an early ballot and walk it in on Election Day because they did not trust the post office and viewed that interchangeably with voting in person.
“2) Donald Trump won E day late earlies in Pima and Maricopa. Voting patterns are way closer to 2020 than they are 2018. They are a world away from 2018, we live in an absolutely different political reality.
“3) there are tens and thousands of missing high propensity Rs that are not reflected in any of the tabulated ballots at this time. It would be a massive anomaly for these core voters to have not showed up. Those voters will be reflected in the early ballots dropped off on e day,” he added.
In addition, Lake’s top advisor claimed on Thursday that Hobbs had “no mathematical path” to victory.
There isn’t…. https://t.co/XTgIAcRbql
— Caroline Wren (@CarolineWren) November 11, 2022
A results report from Maricopa County is scheduled for Friday night, and if the ballots go as predicted, it might be the beginning of a Republican turnaround. RedState will not entertain additional “calls” from political experts and publications.