What do the Recent Election Results Mean?

Paul Bentz, Senior VP Research and Strategy at HighGround, Inc., will talk about the recent numbers from the election and why they are the way they are.

Do Republican Party Candidates can still make up ground?

Looking at the numbers of the Governor, Attorney General and Superintendent of Public Instruction races, the Republican Party candidates still have a chance of declaring victory. From what is left, “Kari Lake needs 57% of every single vote from here on now,” said Bentz. “Hamadeh needs about 54% and Horne needs just a little over 50%.”

What do the results project about voters’ preferences?

A noticed trend in these ballots was Republican voters leaning towards Democratic candidates. Bentz used Maricopa County as an example. “Maricopa County is still a Republican County but it does speak to the challenges that some of these statewide candidates had an appealing to their fundamental Republican base,” said Bentz. “Our polls showed about 10% cross over and it’s probably going to be higher by the end of the day.”

For Independent voters the results showed that “the Independents that dropped out a ballot or voted early did break towards the Democrats,” said Bentz. “The Independents who voted on Election Day physically showed up to vote did lean more Republican.”

According to Bentz this campaign is showing that voters are paying more attention. “It also means that candidates matter, you can’t just put an “R” or a “D” next to your name and hope for the best,” said Bentz. “You have to run a good campaign. You have to appeal to these undecided voters.”

Is it normal for Arizona to take an extended time for ballot counting?

“This is pretty standard in fact we had about 650, 000 ballots left to count after Election Day this year. In 2020 it was about 659, 000. In 2018 it was about 600, 000, and in 2016 it was about 629, 000,” said Bentz.