The results in one of the state's most consequential races continued to roll in Wednesday evening, with the Democratic candidate for governor holding a small lead over her Republican opponent.
Many political watchers expected the lake to shrink the early advantage of Hobbs. In the 2020 presidential election, the voting trends in Arizona were similar.
The former television news anchor, Lake, carried 70% of votes cast statewide on Election Day, collapsing what once was a 14 percentage-point lead among early voters.
According to estimates compiled by the Secretary of State's Office, the margin between the candidates was very close, with over 600,000 ballots still to be counted. Changing margins in the governor's race could happen in the next few days.
The election results are live.
Ballots were dropped off on Election Day and received the next day. Bill Gates said that about 400,000 votes were uncounted and that most of them were dropped off Tuesday.
Before they are counted and included in the results, those ballots have to be verified and separated from their affidavit envelope. Gates said it could be Friday before most of the votes are counted.
Conventional wisdom tells us that candidates don't win the state without winning the county. When the county released about 60,000 newly counted votes on Wednesday evening, Hobbs gained ground against Lake.
Two years ago, Arizonans watched as President Donald Trump's crusade against voting fraud changed voting patterns in the state. Lake may be boosted to victory by early signs.
"Democrats used to win Election Day, that's not the case after 2020 with Trump's narrative about fraud," said Chuck Coughlin, a GOP consultant. Republicans win election day votes because of that.
Fox News called the state for Biden after he opened a large lead over Trump, a decision that caused controversy among conservatives who thought the projection was a mistake.
By the time the election was over, Trump had fallen off the pace he needed to win as votes were added. The president lost the state by a large margin.
If trends hold, Republican candidates are likely to win at least some of the statewide races that Democrats lead on Wednesday.
Marson said that it was an incredible day for Republicans. When most Republicans voted early in the past, they stayed home until Tuesday and then came out in huge numbers. All statewide Republicans will be able to win.
Nicole DeMont said that the campaign believed the race would be close.
"Arizonans deserve to have their ballot counted and their voice heard, and in the days to come we will keep a close eye on the results," DeMont said.
One group that spent millions of dollars in support of Hobbs expressed confidence that he could beat Lake, who has furthered Trump's false claims he won in 2020, though he would have to carry a large number of votes.
Marshall Cohen, the Democratic Governors Association Political Director, said in a press call that there is still a clear path to victory for the candidate. The election will not be decided by the volume of votes cast, but by the number of votes cast.
It could take days for an official call from the AP.
With national attention on the Grand Canyon State following allegations of election malfeasance and trouble with tabulators on Tuesday, the candidates for governor offered different pictures of their own races.
The secretary of state urged her supporters in Phoenix to be patient and have faith in the results.
Lake said that voters should know on election night who won because of past election patterns. She called the delayed results "groundhog day" for 2020, despite election officials' predictions that it could take days to count the votes.
She told Tucker Carlson that she would get rid of the voting machines that caused problems on Tuesday.
About 17,000 ballots have yet to be counted because of issues with the vote counting machines at a third of the polling sites in the county. The state of Arizona does not use machines for voting.
Lake told Carlson that this will be on his agenda when he wins.
Lake said she would call for a special session of the Legislature to change the elections so that they are fair, honest and transparent.
Staffing and resources to hand count millions of ballots would be a challenge. People are inferior to machines at completing repetitive tasks according to a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The reporter can be reached at stacey.barchener@arizonarepublic.com You can follow her on the social networking site.
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The article was originally published in the Arizona Republic.
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