What 2024 election results are saying about the state of Arizona politics

PHOENIX - Election workers are on the clock Sunday night counting tens of thousands of ballots.

It comes as Arizona's Supreme Court refused to extend the deadline for curing ballots. The decision brings the state closer to finalizing the election and the still undecided races.

Mike Noble, founder and CEO of Noble Predictive Insights, is giving his take on the results we're seeing so far, and what they say about the state of politics in the Grand Canyon state, and across the country. 

"I think Arizonans in general want to hear results sooner," Noble said.

Polls closed in Arizona five days ago, and yet some races have still not been decided.

Arizona's choice for president went along with the majority of the country as our 11 electoral votes officially went to president-elect Donald Trump on Nov. 9 after the AP made the projection.

Noble says Trump sitting atop the ticket likely helped the GOP maintain control of the state House.

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"If Harris, for example, let's say she won the state by, let's say, a point or two, I think you could've seen one or both chambers flipping. I think a lot of it was beholden to the top of the ticket, so Trump kind of saved the Republicans' butts this year," Noble said.

One major race where this formulation doesn't appear to have held up is the battle between Rep. Ruben Gallego and Kari Lake for the U.S. Senate.

Noble says this was more of a candidate quality issue.

"Kari Lake. She's always referred to as the Donald Trump of Arizona, and it's true and it's not. She has all the baggage Trump has, but none of the policy wins or the upsides and wins that he has. She really had an image problem. So, for example, on our polling, plus exit polls, 2 to 1 Republicans were defecting against Lake compared to Trump," Noble said.

Overall, Noble says this election and its results signal a larger reshuffling in the way Americans vote.

"The higher income folks are actually trending toward Democrats and the lower income folks are actually trending toward Republicans, with the middle class currently trending to Republicans. What you're also seeing is these non-white voters, so African Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, Asian, ect., you're seeing them – they used to vote as ethnic blocks, right, so they would just vote based on their ethnicity, but what they're doing now is ideologically sorting," Noble explained.

Noble also shared some insight into some of the propositions.

He said it's clear ranked choice voting is not, as he says, ready for prime time as Prop 140 was defeated here and similar efforts failed in a handful of other states as well.

As for the immigration prop and the abortion prop both passing, he says these were top issues for the GOP and Democrats, respectively.