Arizona Senate race: Lake, Gallego await results as vote count is underway
PHOENIX - As votes are being counted, the candidates for the U.S. Senate, Kari Lake and Rep. Ruben Gallego, await the results.
Lake is a Trump-endorsed GOP candidate and former TV anchor who ran for Arizona Governor in 2022, but lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Rep. Gallego is a Democratic Congressman and veteran who currently represents District 3.
Polling from various sources shows the two neck and neck in the race.
On the eve of Election Day, Rep. Gallego campaigned throughout the Valley and Lake made her way up to Prescott for a final rally.
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U.S. Senate balance of power
Nov. 6 updates
Gallego has 50% of the vote, or about 1.1 million. Lake has about 48%, or about a million.
The two are just 2.8 percentage points apart.
"The big question is, these late early ballots where people held their mail ballot and dropped it off, Scott Jarrett, the wonderful election director and myself, were both estimating in our fearful prognostication that 400,000 voters just in Maricopa County might hold on to those and drop them off," Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda said. "We don’t know how many. In 2022, it was 289,000 people. So that’s just going to completely shift where we are now."
According to the Maricopa County Elections Wednesday afternoon, it's expected that approximately 700,000 ballots will be left to tabulate in the coming days.
Gallego and Lake sit just 61,293 votes apart.
FOX 10 reached out to both Gallego and Lake to get their response, but didn’t hear back.
"Let's hang on," Swoboda said. "Let's give everything a chance to come in and see where we are."
Nov. 5 updates
Rep. Ruben Gallego gave a speech to his supporters on the night of Election Day saying he is the "soon-to-be" US Senator representing the state of Arizona.
He leads Lake in early returns, which comprised of mail ballots received and counted before Election Day and about half of the total expected votes. Gallego expressed confidence when he spoke to Democrats on Tuesday night in Phoenix.
"We had a mantra on this campaign: Go everywhere and talk to everyone," Gallego said. "And that’s exactly what we did. We didn’t take one vote for granted."
In a break with tradition, Lake and the Arizona Republican Party did not hold an election night party. Her usually active social media accounts were quiet in the hours after polls closed.
She did eventually post to social media, saying to not believe the mainstream media when they call these races.
The winner of the Senate race will replace Kyrsten Sinema.
Although it was Election Day, Rep. Ruben Gallego didn't waste the day by waiting for votes, and instead he met with voters. FOX 10's Steve Nielsen has the latest on the Arizona Senate race.
FOX 10's Ashlie Rodriguez has the latest as GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake meets with voters on Election Day. She's campaigning against Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego.