Arizona Senate candidates Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Republican Kari Lake answer questions during the Arizona Clean Election Commission debate at BitFire Studios on Oct. 9, 2024 in Phoenix. Photo by Cheryl Evans | The Arizona Republic/Pool
Republican Kari Lake on Friday continued to slowly chip away at the number of votes separating her and her Democratic opponent Ruben Gallego as more results were released in the race for one of Arizona’s U.S. Senate seats.
As of 8 p.m. on Friday, after Maricopa County reported approximately the votes from around 123,220 new ballots, Lake was trailing Gallego by only 1.1 percentage points and 32,779 votes.
The day following the election, Gallego led Lake by 2.5 percentage points and 52,578 votes. That lead shrunk to 43,698 votes Thursday, before decreasing again Friday.
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Lake, a former Phoenix television news anchor, benefited from votes tallied in some of the state’s most deeply red counties like Yavapai, where she garnered an overwhelming nearly 76% of new votes to Gallego’s 22%. U.S. Congressman and Marine veteran Gallego had the advantage in new votes from Coconino County, garnering 57% to Lake’s 39%.
Around 60% of the Grand Canyon State’s voters live in Maricopa County, where Lake led Gallego in new votes tallied on Friday by 2 percentage points. The county has come under fire for its slow counting, both from Arizonans and those across the country who are keeping an eye on the outcome of the race.
Maricopa County has taken an average of 13 days to completely count its ballots over the past 16 years, but counting has gone even slower this year, in part because of a lengthy two-page ballot that takes more time to process and tabulate.
As of Friday evening, around 81% of the state’s ballots had been tallied, with about 351,000 left to count in Maricopa County and almost 629,000 across the state. At that time, 2.8 million ballots had been tallied, out of the state’s almost 4.4 million registered voters, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Lake and her campaign continued an aggressive effort Friday to recruit people to urge voters to cure any issues with their ballots, such as a missing signature on an early ballot envelope, so that their votes count.
The devotee of President-elect Donald Trump and her supporters remained optimistic about her chances of overtaking Gallego as more results come in.
“Guys, I am running through the voters left to count in Arizona and between that and the voters that we know we ballot chased, Kari Lake is in an incredible spot,” Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of Turning Point USA, said in a post on the social media site X. “This thing is going to be close and every ballot matters, but I feel really good about what we know we have left.”
Turning Point USA is a rightwing student activist group based in Phoenix that has been a major player in Republican get out the vote efforts this election cycle.
“We have hundreds of full-time staff and hundreds more volunteers curing every last ballot in Arizona for Kari Lake,” Turning Point CEO Charlie Kirk posted on X Friday. “We are relentless.”
Lake and Gallego, who has represented Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House since 2015, ran acrimonious campaigns, taking turns trading personal barbs and accusations of extremism.
Gallego ran on a platform of making life more affordable for the middle and working class, reestablishing abortion rights and making measured increases in border security that would include increased manpower and better use of technology.
Lake copied Trump’s style in her campaign, calling for completed construction of his border wall, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and an extension of his tax cuts.
Trump endorsed Lake both in her unsuccessful run for Arizona governor in 2022 as well as in this year’s bid for senator.
In the middle of her Senate campaign, Lake continued to unsuccessfully challenge the results of the gubernatorial race in court, and two years later she still has not conceded the race. The Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday denied her final appeal in the case.
Lake is also facing the prospect of paying yet-to-be determined damages to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, after she legally conceded fault in his defamation suit regarding Lake’s false claims that Richer helped rig the 2022 governor’s race against her.
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