Journalists’ Roundtable: 2024 Presidential election insights

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another edition of Journalists’ Roundtable. This week, we were joined by Mary Jo Pitzl and Laurie Roberts of “The Arizona Republic” and azcentral.com and Jim Small of Arizona Mirror.

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable topics included:

• No major drama in election process
• Trump wins Arizona
• Gallego leads Lake
• Schweikert and Ciscomani with slight leads
• Prop 139 wins big
• Prop 314 wins big
• Prop 140 loses big
• Legislative races of note

Trump’s win in Arizona

Mary Jo Pitzl: “Polls everywhere indicated it would be neck and neck. And it just wasn’t true. Across the country Trump dominated.”

Was Tim Walz the correct pick?

Jim Small: “Kamala Harris didn’t lose because she picked Tim Walz, Kamala Harris lost because she was trying to dig herself out of a hole. Joe Biden should have dropped out of the race a year to a year and a half ago and didn’t so Democrats were forced to scramble and they elevated her, she had two and a half months to run a billion-dollar campaign to get voters to know who she was and what she stood for “

Gallego leads Lake

Edit: As of November 13, 2024, Ruben Gallego is the projected winner defeating Kari Lake in the Arizona Senator election.

The pre-election polls had Kari Lake losing by much more than she lost to Ruben Gallego.

Jim Small: “This is not unexpected that she is trailing Ruben Gallego. I think there was a pretty broad consensus that Ruben Gallego had the advantage coming into this.”