Every vote counts. Late Thursday, days after voting in the 2018 midterm elections concluded, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema took the lead over Republican Martha McSally in the race to represent Arizona in the U.S. Senate, replacing retiring Republican Jeff Flake. She had previously been down, but after the state’s largest county — Maricopa — posted a sizable portion of their still outstanding votes, Sinema found herself up by around 2,000 votes.
Longtime elections analyst Harry Enten quipped:
‘This is really why election spin shouldn’t be made on election night at 9pm. Still lots of crazy stuff to come from AZ and FL it seems.’
Up to around two million votes were cast in the Senate race across the state — and Fin Gomez from CBS News estimates that there are around 350,000 of those votes still to be tallied. Who knows precisely how many of those will go to Sinema, but he says that at least 42 percent of them are perceived as “friendly” to the Democratic contender.
If Sinema manages a victory, it would represent a bright spot for Democrats on an otherwise dismal Senate election map. Tuesday night, they lost seats including Joe Donnelly’s in Indiana, Claire McCaskill’s in Missouri, and Heidi Heitkamp’s in North Dakota.
The losses were at least partially offset thanks to Democrats picking up control of the U.S. House of Representatives and thereby attaining at least some Congressional power, including that of the subpoena.
Meanwhile, other races across the country are facing similar contentious outcomes. In Florida, a whole array of statewide races are facing close finishing margins. There’s been talk of recounts in the race to be the state’s next U.S. Senator, Governor, and Commissioner of Agriculture. Margins in those races have hovered around half of one percent, with the Republicans ahead in two of them — for now. They’ve declared resounding victory far and wide, but their declarations are short sighted.
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