Kyrsten Sinema Loses Badly In New Arizona Senate Poll

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In a new round of polling from OH Predictive Insights of prospective voters’ stances ahead of the 2024 race for Senate in Arizona, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I), whose seat will be on the ballot, is losing across four possible configurations that the pollster highlighted.

Sinema has seen her popularity consistently sink amid outrage over her decision to stand by the obstructive filibuster rules in the Senate, which demand the agreement of at least 60 Senators among 100 members of the chamber before moving forward with many initiatives, a requirement that stifles critical action like the protections for abortion and voting rights that have been proposed throughout recent years. She also helped ensure that a piece of legislation championed by Democrats called the Inflation Reduction Act didn’t affect the controversial opportunity for those earning certain forms of additional income in private equity investments known as carried interest to pay less in taxes than might be reasonable considering the circumstances of those earnings.

In line with these issues, there’s a narrative she’s out of touch and more interested in pandering to the wealthy than actually hearing from her constituents. In the OH Predictive Insights polling, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who has announced he is running for Sinema’s seat, led in every match-up, although from a fourth to a third of respondents were identifying themselves as undecided. The numbers showed results from putting Gallego and Sinema on the hypothetical ballot against Republicans including Doug Ducey, Karrin Taylor Robson, Blake Masters, and Kari Lake, and the outcome was mostly the same in all four of these possible scenarios. Gallego had the most support, the Republican’s supporters were second in every contest except the one featuring Taylor Robson, and then came those undecided, followed, in fourth place, by Sinema. In the Masters match-up, Sinema was a percent above the undecideds.

Put differently, it was the Democrat followed by the Republican, after whom came the undecideds and then the independent, meaning Sinema, when it was either Ducey or Lake on the ballot. Taylor Robson saw the undecideds bumped up to second place, and Masters saw Sinema’s supporters in third. Taylor Robson, who’s less known, ran unsuccessfully for governor in Arizona’s GOP primary last year, losing to Lake, who of course then lost the general election to Democratic contender Katie Hobbs, who’s since become governor. Lake continues unsuccessfully challenging her defeat in Arizona’s courts. Meanwhile, Gallego also won in one-on-one match-ups against all four of the Republican candidates included in the polling, finishing as much as 11 percent ahead.

Sinema, if she decides to run, will make it to the general election regardless of who else joins the race, because she changed her party affiliation from the Democrats to that of an independent, which doesn’t affect which party controls the U.S. Senate but does impact whether she could face a primary challenge. It was clear before the switch that some Democrats were interested in primarying her.