Who will win the Arizona Senate race — Kari Lake or Ruben Gallego?

The Senate race in Arizona remains undecided three days after Election Day, and it could be weeks before the race is called.
The candidates have remained within a few percentage points of each other. As of Friday afternoon, Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, was ahead in the race to replace Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who is not seeking reelection, with 49.7% of the vote. Republican Kari Lake is right behind him, with 48.2%.
So far, approximately 2.7 million ballots, or 78% of the estimated vote, have been counted.
According to the Arizona secretary of state’s website, an estimated 758,409 ballots are still uncounted, a majority of these ballots, about 450,000, from Maricopa County.
In the three days since Election Day, Lake has led at times, as has Gallego, but it may be weeks before the winner emerges.
Elections officials are also “curing” ballots during this time. That’s when a county allows voters to verify their ID should there be any problems with their ballot.
Lacey Nagao, the Chase the Vote director for Turning Point Action, in a social media post said over 1,000 supporters have signed up to help cure ballots since Wednesday.
“They have been trained and ready to take action. We have cured as many as possible the moment we receive data,” she said. Nagao noted TPA is struggling to receive the data of voters who needed their ballots cured from the Arizona Republican Party. Tyler Bowyer, the chief operations officer of TPA, said, “There will be no stone left unturned in Arizona,” while urging others to help cure ballots in a post on X.
Lake, a prominent Donald Trump surrogate, previously ran for governor in 2022 and lost. But Lake refused to concede, alleging election fraud and entering into an unsuccessful years-long legal battle over the election results.
Unlike Gallego, who received financial support from his potential Democratic colleagues in the Senate, Lake did not get help from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell or allies, as the Arizona Republic reported. Despite the lack of support, Lake’s final campaign push helped her close the gap in the polls. President-elect Trump appears to be heading for a victory in the state, but Lake has had trouble gaining traction with all of those who voted for Trump.
While Trump is ahead, the race between him and Vice President Kamala Harris, who conceded Wednesday, is also too close to call in Arizona. In 2020, President Joe Biden won this state by less than 100,000 votes. According to The Associated Press tracker, as of Friday Trump had 52.7% of the vote and Harris has 46.3%, as votes continue being counted.
Arizona is known to take time in reporting its election results. In 2020, the state took more than three weeks to certify election results and nearly a month in 2022. But county official Taylor Kinnerup disputed the claim that the Grand Canyon State, including Maricopa County, takes too long to count votes.
“We are actually faster than most counties,” said Kinnerup, the communications director at the Maricopa County Recorder’s office, as the Deseret News previously reported. “The difference is, our votes come down to the wire. Our contests are separated by sometimes less than 300 votes.”
Arizona law is also particular on ballot processing, which includes signature verification. Mail-in ballots sent on Election Day are required to be counted, which also adds to the delays.
Arizona state Rep. Justin Heap, who won the race for Maricopa County recorder, said he thought this year’s election was smoother, but he is still interested in introducing some changes.
“It looks like Election Day went much better,” he told Arizona’s Family Thursday. “We still have an issue that may be according to the secretary of state, it might be 13, 14 days before we have final results. We need to deliver those results faster. I think a long delay just makes people begin to question the system. We need to improve that,” he said.
As a state representative, he has voted to do away with early and mail-in voting. Heap won against Democratic candidate Tim Stringham with more than 44,000 votes. He is unseating Stephen Richer, who he defeated in the Republican primary earlier this year. Richer has defended the integrity of Arizona’s elections and earned the title of defender of democracy from Time magazine.