As we continue to wait for more results from Arizona, the Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, has been on a media blitz, complaining about how long the vote counting is taking, saying she is confident she will win and hinting that if she doesn’t, it’s because of fraud. In an interview with conservative radio host Joe Pags, Lake said there was “no mathematical way for Katie Hobbs, with the ballots that are remaining, to win.” That’s not true. To come out on top, Lake needs to win 53 percent of the outstanding ballots, which we haven’t seen in the most recent vote drops (though is definitely possible). Lake has been one of the most vocal election-denying candidates this midterm season. She embraced Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, repeated debunked conspiracy theories and even questioned the legitimacy of her own party’s primary … which she won! Given this pattern and the kind of rhetoric Lake is already sowing, it’s possible she will refuse to concede if she loses, and baselessly blame the loss on fraud. We’ve already seen other election-denying candidates who lost take this same path: Michael Peroutka, the Republican nominee for Maryland attorney general who lost by more than 300,000 votes, has refused to concede and says there were “odd and suspicious incidents” during the election, without providing evidence. Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, has also yet to concede to Democrat Josh Shapiro, though Mastriano hasn’t claimed there was fraud, either.
