As Nathaniel discussed earlier, the margin in the race for Arizona attorney general is just 236 votes right now: Democrat Kris Mayes has 1,250,769 votes to Republican Abe Hamadeh’s 1,250,533, with an uncertain number of votes left to tally (Arizona’s secretary of state’s office says around 10,000 statewide, but some are provisional votes that may not end up being valid). In percentage terms then, Mayes leads Hamadeh 50.0047 percent to 49.9953, a margin of 0.0094 points. That is extremely close, to put it mildly. With a recount likely here, we were curious just how much that could move the numbers, although again these totals will still shift somewhat more in the days to come.
Helpfully, FairVote has an updated report on recounts in statewide elections dating back to 2000. In that span, they only found 35 statewide races that went to a recount, which makes sense as recounts usually happen only when a margin is quite close. In just three of those 35 races did the candidate who trailed entering the recount come out on top. But in a sign of just how close the Arizona attorney general’s race is, a recount moved a race’s margin by 0.01 in about two-thirds of those 35 contests, which would be enough to shift the current result in Arizona if the margin moved in Hamadeh’s favor. Now we have to wait and see just how close the final pre-recount vote totals will be.