In Arizona this year, Republican Kari Lake — who ran unsuccessfully for governor in the state in 2022 — is running for Senate. And polling keeps showing the Trump-aligned figure losing by a large margin to her Democratic opponent Ruben Gallego, who is currently an Arizona Congressman.
The latest numbers are from polling by The New York Times and Siena College. Among likely voters, Gallego nabbed 51 percent of the support, while Lake was at 42 percent — a margin much larger than the margin by which she lost the governor’s race two years ago.
Besides that years-old election, Arizona Democrats also have seen other recent electoral success in the state, including the win there of Joe Biden in 2020 and Mark Kelly’s victory in the state’s 2022 Senate race. This time around, it’s the state’s other U.S. Senate seat that is on the ballot. It is currently held by Democrat-turned-independent Kyrsten Sinema, who opted not to seek re-election at all amid waves of criticism from Democrats.
This same set of polling also measured prospective voters’ takes on this year’s presidential race pitting Democratic contender Kamala Harris against Republican nominee Donald Trump, and Harris led Trump by five percentage points in Arizona among likely voters when only the two of them were specifically named to poll participants. She was still up by four percent when candidates outside of the major parties were included.
Harris recently visited Arizona, and Kelly — who was once discussed as a possibility to be Harris’ own running mate this year — discussed the rally in a later CNN interview. “And the amount of excitement that’s behind the Harris-Walz campaign is just off the charts. Gabby and I were in Glendale, just on Friday, and got to experience that. And there’s a tremendous amount of energy. But I listened very closely to what she had to say. And Kamala Harris is about taking this country forward,” the Senator said on air.
Image: Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons
