Arizona Democrats held a small but shrinking lead over their Republican rivals in the U.S. Senate and state government races on Thursday, in results that could determine control of the House and rules for the 2024 election. a crucial state in electoral terms.
Two days after the vote, no results have been announced and some 600,000 ballots remain to be counted, roughly a quarter of the total cast.
The lengthy count of votes has for years been a hallmark of elections in Arizona, where the vast majority of ballots are cast via mail and many people wait until the last minute to cast them. But as the state has ceased to be a GOP stronghold, the delays have increasingly become a source of national anxiety for stakeholders.
After taking the lead on election night itself, when the first returned ballots had just been counted, the Democrats’ lead was shrinking by the hour. On Thursday morning, Democrats led the Senate, governor and secretary of state races, while the race for attorney general was tied. It could be several days before it becomes clear who won some of the closest contests.
With Republicans still on the hunt, it was unclear whether the stronger-than-expected turnout for Democrats in much of the United States would spill over to Arizona, a longtime Republican stronghold that became an electoral battleground during the Donald Trump’s presidency.
The Republican Party brought a list of candidates who won the endorsement of Trump after falsely claiming that the elections against Joe Biden were fraudulent.
Democrats had margins of about 5 points in the Senate and Secretary of State races, but with so many pending ballots, the races are too close to declare a winner.
In the race for attorney general, Republican Abraham Hamadeh led Democrat Kris Mayes.
Meanwhile, authorities in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county, said some 17,000 ballots were affected by a printing error that prevented tellers from reading some votes, a problem that delayed voting in some places and angered voters. Republicans who had a strong turnout on Election Day. County officials said all ballots will be counted but did not give a timeframe for doing so.
The cause remains a mystery.
“There are no perfect elections. Yesterday was not a perfect election,” Bill Gates, chairman of the county board of supervisors, told reporters. “We will learn from it and do better.”