How did Kari Lake and the GOP manage to lose AZ?

[Cyrusman]

I think this is the one loss I am the most puzzled about in large part because of how weak of a campaign Hobbs ran and the fact that AZ still very much leans republican at the state level.

Lake managed to lose despite

- Hobbs running a mediocre campaign at BEST
- Hobbs refusing to debate
- Record inflation
- High gas prices in AZ
- AZ being of the states in which "border security" is very much on the minds of people and an important issue
- Lake having name recognition and a certain charisma that seemed favorable to her
- Generic Republicans winning AZ by 6 points or so.

Like seriously, how do you lose this? I feel like you almost have to try and lose this type of a race. It would make sense if Katie Hobbs was a great, exciting, candidate that appealed to a wide range of voters who ran a great campaign, but that did not happen. Honestly Fetterman to me was a stronger candidate for the Dems despite his stroke compared to Hobbs. At least he appealed somewhat to the working class in central PA. There is nothing special about Hobbs at all. Even many Democrat's were not overly excited.

Bonus question: How would Karen Taylor Robson have done?

[5280]

Mass ex-Californians moving here, that's all you need to know.

[Heebie Jeebie]

Hobbs didn't run a great campaign, but she was fine as a candidate.  And she actually made some really smart choices, like not bothering with the debate.  Lake was a horrible candidate who ran a horrible campaign.  Most voters, even Arizona voters, are just exhausted with all the craziness.  They want politicians to be normal again.

[Meatball Ron]

Hobbs didn't run a great campaign, but she was fine as a candidate.  And she actually made some really smart choices, like not bothering with the debate.  Lake was a horrible candidate who ran a horrible campaign.  Most voters, even Arizona voters, are just exhausted with all the craziness.  They want politicians to be normal again.

Yeah basically agree with this; I don't understand the revisionist narrative that Lake was a great candidate with great charisma. As results across the country tell us: voters in swing states / districts are largely done with election deniers.

[wbrocks67]

We're still on this "Hobbs ran a terrible campaign" nonsense?

Literally no one who says this can point to any tangible thing outside of not debating. She campaigned across the state, she made appearances, she ran TV ads (more than Lake), and ran on mainstream Democratic issues that most other candidates were running on (abortion, democracy, economy, etc.)

Again, just because she was quiet and not yelling everywhere how great she was does not make her a super flawed candidate. People really have bent themselves into a pretzel about this because of how flashy and flamboyant Lake was by comparison.

Not just that, but she was already a statewide office holder, a known commodity, the only statewide Democrat btw outside of Senator! She was also pretty high profile during 2020 as SOS!

I'm not even trying to be a super Hobbs defender at this point, but the truth is no one has been able to actually back up the whole "she was a really bad candidate" with any actual evidence other than just saying it and ~vibes~

[Cyrusman]

Mass ex-Californians moving here, that's all you need to know.

Not everyone moving from California is a Democrat. Plenty of Independents and Republicans move too. Also, those Californians apparently had no problem voting in the GOP for 6 of 9 congressional seats, and voting for Yee by 10-11 points.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This post reminds me of a certain type of blue avatar thinking (OP isn't a blue avatar but it's common amongst them) that treats elections like a video game in a sense, and that if you meet a certain set of criteria then you're guaranteed victory. Like once Keystone Phil was really  upset about the Republicans losing an election for this reason, not so much because it was an election he was hoping the Republicans would take and was disappointed but also because it didn't meet "the rules" that the Republican would win.

So the fact is despite all the above most voters didn't care about Hobbs, they were just afraid of Lake. The whole "democracy is on the ballot" campaign near the end definitely worked, and managed to scare any normally squishy Biden voters into just voting D and carrying Hobbs over. The "BUT HOBBS WON'T DEBATE!" thing turned out to be more of a Twitter rallying cry for Republicans than something voters actually cared about, which isn't surprising.

This also makes me wonder if the whole campaign that we're voting on democracy itself impacted the results in a way that polls didn't catch as noted by Lake's consistent lead, like perhaps a lot of low propensity D voters were motivated by it (note that the results tended to be closer to the RV results of a poll instead of LV, so maybe registered voters who didn't fit "likely" criteria were heavily motivated and heavily broke for Democrats.) It's also possible that the undecideds just overwhelmingly broke D because while they weren't happy with things, they were afraid of the MAGA Republicans and threat to future democracy even more.

[wbrocks67]

Let's not forget too that Kari Lake literally made *NO* appeal to Independents/swing voters at all in Arizona. Like, literally nothing. She played to the base until the very end.

[Panda Express]

Did you not pay attention to the race? Kari Lake was a hardcore election denier and nutter, was creepy/cultish in her worship of Trump and literally did things like this one week before the general election

“We don’t have any McCain Republicans in here, do we?” former television anchor Lake asked the event’s attendees, who booed in response.

“Well, get the hell out!” Lake said, directed at McCain supporters.

Saying stupid/crazy stuff like this is worse than not debating. Hobbs may not be charismatic, but she was a normal person

[DrScholl]

Hobbs ran a basic mainstream campaign and that was enough to the win the race. It was a matter of showing a sharp contrast between the two candidates and Hobbs managed to do that by working smartly, no by trying to outdo Lake with being over the top.

[xavier110]

Mass ex-Californians moving here, that's all you need to know.

This is just not true. You can look at precinct maps and see there’s definitely persuasion at play.

Not just that, but she was already a statewide office holder, a known commodity, the only statewide Democrat btw outside of Senator! She was also pretty high profile during 2020 as SOS!

Nit picky but she was not the only statewide D. Kennedy is Corp commissioner and Hoffman is Superintendent of Instruction. Weirdly both lost or will lose this year…

Let's not forget too that Kari Lake literally made *NO* appeal to Independents/swing voters at all in Arizona. Like, literally nothing. She played to the base until the very end.

This is the answer (which ties into the election denialism — I remember replying that it would be close largely due to her ongoing 2020 comments to a Republican here a week or two ago who had said Lake would easily win).

Despite whatever the exit polls say, from the party ID of early ballots alone, we know that Hobbs:

- won allll the Ds
- won Is by 20-25 points, maybe more…
- won 10 percent of Rs

It’s wild that Kelly pulled even higher numbers than those.

[Progressive Pessimist]

I think this is endemic to all of the election deniers who lost this year, but apparently voters don't like being told that their votes were fraudulent or don't matter and they will be more than happy to use those votes against you if you intend to run on not actually doing your job and/or valuing what your constituents want in their elected officials.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Chris Sununu summed it all up the other day when he said "Voters told us fix policy later, fix crazy first."

[Podgy the Bear]

If you think Hobbs ran a mediocre campaign, what do you think Lake's campaign turned out to be?  She alienated McCain Republicans who would probably have easily supported her if she hadn't been so hostile and effectively threw them out of the party. 

Pretty stupid to make the tent smaller--you don't win elections that way.

[TodayJunior]

Honestly, I think it was the Dobbs decision. I think that really made the difference here. There was a Republicans against Kari Lake campaign launched 3 weeks before Election Day, specifically to target Republican voters who tend to vote on Election Day.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The GOP had a popular incumbent Governor who was well liked by a majority of the state's voters.

Then the GOP threw him to the curb as a blood sacrifice to facilitate Trump's ego/power preservation scheme, otherwise known as the "election was stolen".

Republicans have essentially told former McCain supporters that they need not enter, which includes many conservative leaning independents.

Finally, yes, you do have many people moving in from California, which makes those independents all the more important.

Lastly, Kelli Ward is a disaster as state party chair and should be fired for her successful dismantling of the AZ GOP, but nope. Because if you just keep screaming fraud and stolen elections, you will never have to worry about accountability. Donald Trump proved that.

[Roll Roons]

Yeah, this kind of thing doesn't look pathetic at all:
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1579260714354868225

[Spectator]

Yeah, I'm sure this kind of thing looks amazing and not pathetic at all:
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1579260714354868225

This was probably the funniest post-election tweet I’ve seen

https://twitter.com/Laurieluvsmolly/status/1591981100297224192?s=20&t=A0A86L...

[prag_prog]

She is for sure charismatic but she overdid some stuff. For example, there was literally no need for her to say stuff like this, especially in a state like Arizona which does have decent number of moderate Rs and also a state where atleast a section of Republicans like McCain.

https://twitter.com/tcani/status/1588801720918085636

[Dani Rose]

Lovecraftian insanity. And when I say Lovecraftian, I mean that sincerely and fully, right down to the blabbering, incomprehensible levels of bigotry.

[Figueira]

Would anyone be making this thread if the polls had consistently shown Hobbs ahead?

[Schiff for Senate]

Hobbs didn't run a great campaign, but she was fine as a candidate.  And she actually made some really smart choices, like not bothering with the debate.  Lake was a horrible candidate who ran a horrible campaign.  Most voters, even Arizona voters, are just exhausted with all the craziness.  They want politicians to be normal again.

Yeah basically agree with this; I don't understand the revisionist narrative that Lake was a great candidate with great charisma. As results across the country tell us: voters in swing states / districts are largely done with election deniers.

This. I was honestly pretty surprised that people were giving Hobbs the edge or calling this race a tossup, since from what I've seen, Lake seems like a pretty far-right, kooky, crazy, bad candidate. As others have said, though, she apparently delivered her message (extremist as it was) in a much more persuasive manner than, say, Mark Finchem or Blake Masters.

[Schiff for Senate]

I think this is the one loss I am the most puzzled about in large part because of how weak of a campaign Hobbs ran and the fact that AZ still very much leans republican at the state level.

Citation desperately needed. I get why one might think that just by looking at, say, 2018 AZ-GOV, and how much Ducey won by in a blue wave. But the GOP did pathetically in statewide races in AZ, with an unpopular Democratic president in the White House, in what, initially, in theory, should've been a very pro-GOP environment. This was in no small part due to their nominating extremist, low-quality candidates, like Masters and Finchem. Now you might make the case that the GOP, having learned its lesson, will get their act together in 2026, seeing what happened with their candidates in 2022 (and even then, calling AZ "very much Lean R" is a stretch at this point). But I highly doubt it. This, scary, extreme, shocking as it is, IS the new AZGOP, is the new norm for the Republicans. The AZGOP is hardly McCain's party anymore, or Ducey's (it censured both Ducey and McCain's widow, as well as former senator Jeff Flake, last year). When it WAS Ducey's party, McCain's party, a more pragmatic and 'establishment' party, AZ may very well have been Lean R in statewide races (I mean, Ducey's performance in 2018 was, all things considered, very impressive - he won by a solid margin even as the incumbent GOP senator he appointed lost reelection, and other Democrats won other statewide races). But now? The AZGOP is the party of Trump, just like the national GOP. And AZ is, if anything, probably closer to Lean D than Lean R in statewide races if that's the case, if this year's election is anything to go by.

[wbrocks67]

Not to mention Ciscomani was a star GOP recruit that seemingly had no baggage, and yet he only won by 1 in a Biden +0.4 seat in a Biden midterm with a Dem who was triaged...

[Ogre Mage]

Kari Lake is a radical MAGAt election denier.  Her lipstick was skillfully applied but nothing could conceal that fact.  Arizonans were tired of that nonsense. I also think the Dobbs decision played a role.

Katie Hobbs served well as SoS and was a more proven commodity.  Lake was the better political performer but she did not have the relevant experience Hobbs had.  Arizonans wisely chose substance over style.

But Lake lost the race by slightly less than 1%.  Blake Masters and Mark Finchem were also radical MAGAt election deniers and they lost by about 5%.  So Lake did considerably better than her fellow fascists.  I would submit that as evidence her political skills were not imaginary.  Fortunately, it was not quite enough to win.