Katie Hobb’s Lead Over Kari Lake Narrows in Arizona Governor’s Race

As the nail-biting tension of the race for governor of Arizona continues to unfold, a new report offers a bit of optimism for supporters of Republican Kari Lake.

Democrat Katie Hobbs has been in the lead since Election Night after a hard-fought campaign between Lake and Hobbs.

On Saturday, Hobbs defied predictions that she would lose her lead when 85,000 votes from Maricopa County were tallied. With those counted, she was clinging to a 1.6 percentage-point lead, according to KSAZ-TV.

But Saturday closed with about 270,000 votes left to count, and Hobbs up by about 35,000 votes.

On Sunday, Garrett Archer, an elections analyst with KNXV-TV suggested that the erosion in the lead held by Hobbs that Republicans have been waiting for could be finally beginning.

About 90k of the remaining 170k uncounted EVs are from the ruby red CDs 5, 8, and 9. Another 70k from purple CDs 1 and 4. https://t.co/AAijIbiNyF

— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 13, 2022

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1591837732682502145?

“About 90k of the remaining 170k uncounted EVs are from the ruby red CDs 5, 8, and 9. Another 70k from purple CDs 1 and 4,” he wrote in a Twitter post, referring to early votes in the state’s congressional districts.

The comment was in line with a tweet from Saturday.

👋. Being that guy again.

Today’s 85K batch only included a portion of this 114K. The reason you haven’t seen any calls, is b/c The agencies know this is coming.

It’s not a question that Rs will win the next batches. Only a question of by how much. https://t.co/ZUnoNIHwb9

— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 13, 2022

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1591631960237297664?

“It’s not a question that Rs will win the next batches. Only a question of by how much,” he wrote in a separate tweet.

However, Republican pollster Paul Bentz of the Phoenix firm HighGround had been less rosy on Lake’s chances, according to the Arizona Republic.

“There’s still a path to victory here for Lake,” Bentz said.

“But she needs these remaining rounds of ballots to be incredibly Republican-leaning from here on out. She can’t afford to have another round of returns on this level; otherwise, it will make it incredibly difficult to come back,” he said.

Lake said after the polls closed that she would be patient, but that she also had faith.

“God did not put us in this fight because it was going to be easy,” Lake said Tuesday, according to KSAZ-TV. “Not one thing that we’ve had to go through has been easy.

“We’re gonna be patient. We’re gonna wait,” Lake said. “We will take the victory when it comes, and we will turn this around.”

On Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” on Sunday, Lake said Hobbs, who is currently Arizona’s secretary of state and as such oversees elections, should have recused herself from that role because of her candidacy for governor.

“We called for her to recuse herself July of last year, 2021, right after we got into the race, recognizing that there’s a major ethical problem there. Obviously, just the optics of it looks bad. And she didn’t do that,”  Lake said.

“Even though many people [have] been calling for her to recuse herself, it creates problems, to say the least.”

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