Just when you thought it was all wrapped up, in come the mail-in ballots.
Republican Senate candidate Martha McSally was holding on to a slim lead on election night and finished ahead. For many, it appeared the Republicans would hold on to Sen. Jeff Flakes seat.
However, according to the Daily Caller, the massive amount of mail-in ballots — Arizona’s votes are cast by mail by a whopping 75 percent — are now telling a different story and one that favors the Democrat’s Senate candidate, Kyrsten Sinema:
Following a dump of new mail-in ballots Sunday, Sinema expanded her lead over GOP Rep. Martha McSally — with Sinema now leading by 32,292 votes, or 1.5 percentage-points. Her campaign is declaring it would be impossible at this point for McSally to swing the election.
“With the latest ballot count, Kyrsten’s lead is insurmountable,” Andrew Piatt, Sinema’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “McSally’s campaign said today’s results would be her ‘firewall’ but as we expected, no firewall emerged … Kyrsten will be declared the next U.S. Senator from Arizona.”
McSally’s campaign is still holding out hope that the remaining 200,000 ballots yet to be counted will pull her ahead in the 11th hour, however, many of these ballots are coming from counties that favor Sinema. These counties include Pima, Coconino, Maricopa, and Pinal. All are blue areas with the exception of Pinal.
“McSally would have to win the remainder of Maricopa County ballots by 22 percent to take the lead in this race. This is not plausible,” Piatt noted.
This is somewhat a surprising turn of events, seeing as how Sinema has, on several occasions, insulted the state of Arizona and its people. She is on video showing disdain for the state of Arizona, and calling it the “meth lab of Democracy.”
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