The race for governor in Arizona is still neck and neck. With 69 percent of the expected vote reporting, both Democrat Katie Hobbs and Republican Kari Lake have 50 percent, though Hobbs has a slight lead of a little over 10,000 votes. Last night, Lake made a speech where she hinted at the election fraud conspiracy theories she has spread throughout her campaign, but stopped short of crying fraud outright in her own race — she still expressed optimism that she will come out on top once all the votes are tallied. If she loses, though, she may take a page out of Trump’s playbook in challenging the results and claiming fraud, even without evidence. This race pitted a Trump-style, MAGA Republican figure against an establishment Democratic candidate (Hobbs is a former state Senator and currently Arizona’s Secretary of State), and it has remained competitive even as Hobbs showed some campaign weaknesses: She was embroiled in a scandal last year over the prior firing of a staffer while she was in the state Senate. But we expect many of the votes tallied today to skew red as Election Day ballots get counted, giving Lake an opportunity to surge ahead. If the margins remain razor-thin, though, we could end up with a recount. Recently, Arizona state lawmakers changed the threshold for triggering an automatic recount — now, any race where the margin of victory is within 0.5 percent will require a recount.
