Democrat Katie Hobbs is the expected winner of Arizona's governor race against Republican Kari Lake, according to reports from the Associated Press and other outlets.
The Associated Press (AP) called the race for Hobbs at 9:20 p.m. Eastern, nearly one week after Election Day. With over 90 percent of the state's votes counted, Hobbs garnered 1,265,331 (50.41 percent) while 1,244,850 (49.59 percent) were a vote for Lake, per The New York Times. Hobbs has a lead of 20,481 votes.
The results from Monday night’s vote totals in Maricopa County prompted the need to call for Hobbs because Lake was unable to reach the amount she required to keep the race going. After being unable to catch up in the early votes, which were delivered prior to Election Day, Lake needed huge margins from millions of Election Day drop-off ballots in purple Maricopa County to break her way. NBC News was the first to announce the race.
Although Lake was able to get a boost from Monday night's batch that were brimming with pro-Republican election day ballots against Hobbs, they weren't enough to win the race. She had to win at least 62 percent of Tuesday's Maricopa results, as stated by ABC 15's data analyst Garret Archer in a Facebook Live prior to the results being released. The candidate received 56.82 percent of votes.
Maricopa's results of Monday's election included 72,523 ballots. The estimate of the county is that 98.6 percent of the total votes have been counted. According to the county, the follows is an analysis of remaining ballots between 5,000 and 15,000 following Monday's results:
Expected Election Day ballots to be recorded: 3500
Estimated number early ballots left to be recorded: 7600
Proposed Ballots Total: 7885
Conditional Provisional Ballots: 246
Proposed Ballots to Research: 193
Proposed Ballots to Tabulation: 2:876
Provisional Ballots That Will Not be Included in the Count 4570
Hobbs, who is currently serving as Secretary of State for Arizona, refused to debate Lake at any time during the campaign, and this drew criticism from both parties. In the end, Hobbs appears to have triumphed by absconding Lake.
The current Secretary of State will succeed the governor who is retiring, Doug Ducey (R-AZ), and will be the first Democrat to be elected as Governor of the Grand Canyon State since Gov. Janet Napolitano from 2003-2009.
Lake, who was an ex- Fox 10 Phoenix anchor of 22 years who former President Donald Trump endorsed, looked to be among the most prominent Republican candidates across the nation due to her exceptional communications skills and enthusiasm that she had from her supporters. The loss is a result of the fact that she was the leader in the majority of polls published on FiveThirtyEight's website in the weeks leading up to the presidential election.
In the past, the two were neck-and-neck in polls, but Lake seemed to be taking a lead in the closing weeks.
In the last leg of the race, former president Barack Obama held a rally with Hobbs and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), along with other Democrats, in the hope of getting them over into the final stretch. It was reported by the Associated Press and other news agencies that the U.S. Senate race went to Kelly over his Republican opponent, Blake Masters, on Friday. Former Obama attorney general Eric Holder also campaigned with Hobbs during the last days of the campaign.
