Why Kelly's 5 point win is a lot more impressive than topline numbers suggests

[ProgressiveModerate]

To put it very basically, turnout dynamics were not in his favor, and yet he still outperformed Biden by 5% statewide. The largest turnout dropoffs from 2020 were almost exclusively in the bluest parts of the state - Hispanic communities and Native communities, as is normal for AZ in midterm years.

If one were to look at a swing map, outside of heavily Hispanic and Native precincts, Kelly outran Biden by about an average of 6-10 points throughout most of the state. He won AZ-06 by over 9 points (Biden won it by 400 votes), he won AZ-04 by 17 points, and only lost AZ-08 by 6 points, just to give a few examples.

Same goes for Hobbs; even though she basically ran even with Biden topline, she outran him in 24/30 legislative districts, low turnout in D areas just made things closer.

To a lesser extent, this is also true with Sinema's 2018 win. On DRA, doing a 2018Sen to 2020Sen swing precinct map would make it look like Sinema did a least a point or so better than Kelly, but in reality, their statewide margins were eerily identical.

The fact that the GOP did this poorly even with favorable turnout should really scare them for 2024, and cause them to rethink.

[Vosem]

The fact that the GOP did this poorly even with favorable turnout should really scare them for 2024, and cause them to rethink.

To rethink what? (Very weird place to cut off a sentence). They're not going to rethink the party's fundamental principles. Hopefully they'll make better decisions in what candidates they nominate in 2024 (the AZ candidates in 2022 were basically handpicked by Trump; those who weren't won, those who were neither handpicked by Trump and had no corruption scandals won by double-digits), but to be honest I'm not sure I have a lot of hope for this happening, particularly in AZ.

[Ferguson97]

The fact that the GOP did this poorly even with favorable turnout should really scare them for 2024, and cause them to rethink.

To rethink what? (Very weird place to cut off a sentence). They're not going to rethink the party's fundamental principles. Hopefully they'll make better decisions in what candidates they nominate in 2024 (the AZ candidates in 2022 were basically handpicked by Trump; those who weren't won, those who were neither handpicked by Trump and had no corruption scandals won by double-digits), but to be honest I'm not sure I have a lot of hope for this happening, particularly in AZ.

Are the candidates that primary voters choose not a reflection of the party's principles?

[Peeperkorn]

the party's fundamental principles.

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

the party's fundamental principles.

He said "PRINCIPALS", not "PRINCIPLES". 

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Kelly has the sympathy vote from Gabby Giffords his wife that's why, we still don't know the results of this investigation AZ is gonna be alot tougher since it's a tossup race even with Ruben Gallego

Kelly has a twin brother that looks just like him

[Unelectable Bystander]

Based on early vote patterns and analysis of 2022 primary data, it became obvious to me that R’s would have an extreme turnout advantage in Arizona. I thought Masters would win by 2% and was proven quite wrong. This shows a few things:

Kelly is more skilled than he received credit for.

“Anybody but Trump” does not always mean better numbers with moderates.

Trends are pretty bad for R’s in Arizona (with the caveat that this state has many “elastic” voters, even though I don’t like that word).

[Torie]

The focus group reactions to Blake Masters that the Senate Pub campaign committee conducted were so catastrophically bad, that it cut off funding for Masters. Kelly was an usually strong candidate for the Dems from baseline, and Masters was way below baseline.

[wbrocks67]

Kelly, Hobbs, Fontes, and Mayes winning in a R+8 environment is really something

https://twitter.com/sfalmy/status/1618691369022922752