After six days of counting votes, Decision Desk HQ called the Arizona gubernatorial race for Democrat Katie Hobbs Monday night just before 9 p.m. EST.
Decision Desk HQ projects Katie Hobbs (D) elected governor in Arizona.
R to D Flip.#DecisionMade: 8:50pm EST
Follow more results here: https://t.co/erllKAE1oN pic.twitter.com/tPr9aZOKBk
— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) November 15, 2022
Days earlier, Caroline Wren, a senior advisor to Kari Lake, looked at the outstanding ballots to be counted from heavily Republican districts and said there was currently “no mathematical path” for Hobbs to win. However, it soon became apparent that Lake wasn’t hitting the margins to overcome Hobbs’ small lead.
“Wow! They just took the election away from Kari Lake. It’s really bad out there!” Trump said in a post shared to Truth Social.
Trump isn’t the only one crying foul. Several blame Election Day problems that disproportionately affected Republican districts on Election Day. “I’m awed by Katie Hobbs who managed to be in charge of AZ’s election and allowed the biggest suppression of Election Day votes while having her squad count so slowly and privately that no one has any idea what the hell just happened including reporters,” CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp tweeted Monday.
The Arizona Republican Party officially accused Maricopa County election officials of voter suppression.
“Voter suppression reared its ugly head in Arizona at the hands of Maricopa County. Some wonder if it is just incompetence, while others question malfeasance. This cannot simply be accepted. It must be corrected before this election is certified. Exit polling shows that Republican voters were disproportionately disenfranchised by Maricopa County’s incompetence,” Arizona GOP Chairwoman Dr. Kelli Ward said in a statement released Sunday.
So far, Kari Lake has yet to concede the race, and due to the various problems that plagued this election, it doesn’t appear that she will any time soon.
“Arizonans know BS when they see it,” she tweeted late Monday night.
Arizonans know BS when they see it.
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) November 15, 2022
Many have been highly critical of the drawn-out counting and Katie Hobbs’s failure to recuse herself from her election oversight duties while being a candidate.
But some in the party aren’t convinced that there were any issues with the election. “Don’t do what Stacey Abrams did in 2018 or what Donald Trump did in 2020,” Ari Fleischer, the former White House Press Secretary for George W. Bush, implored Lake on Twitter. “When you lose, accept the will of the people. It’s better to be magnanimous in victory and gracious in defeat.”
Whatever happens, going forward, it is clear that the way the elections were handled in Arizona shattered faith in the electoral process in the state. This is something Kari Lake has warned about for two years now and vowed to fix. Voters on both sides of the aisle should feel confident in the results, no matter what the outcome, yet, according to a new poll from Rasmussen Reports, 57% of likely voters believe that cheating likely affected the outcome of the midterm elections this year — including 49% of Democrats.
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