With 83 percent of the vote counted, The Associated Press called the race Friday night for Kelly — a Navy combat veteran, retired NASA astronaut and husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz. It leads Masters, a 36-year-old “anti-progressive” venture capital, by an insurmountable margin of 52% to 46%. « Ενδιάμεσες Εκλογές Γερουσίας της Αριζόνα 2022: Τελευταίες ενημερώσεις και αποτελέσματα »> Along with neighboring Nevada, Arizona was one of two battleground states where the Senate outcome remained up in the air long after Election Day as officials counted every last batch of ballots to determine the winner. Both parties now eagerly await results from the Silver State, where incumbent Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is in a tight race with her Republican challenger, Adam Laxalt. Although Laxalt has held a narrow lead for much of the week, analysts predict his rural firewall ultimately won’t be strong enough to withstand Cortez Masto’s 2-to-1 advantage among tens of thousands of eleventh-hour mail-in voters and around. Las Vegas and Reno, whose ballots are being counted last. The Nevada race could take place over the weekend. A third key Senate race — the showdown between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and former Georgia football star Herschel Walker — is headed for a Dec. 6 runoff. Neither candidate secured the 50% of the vote needed to win outright. U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., speaks at a news conference outside the Arizona State Capitol on Monday in Phoenix. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) But Kelly’s crucial victory in Arizona gives Democrats 49 seats in the Senate. Nevada would reach 50. That means if Cortez Masto beats Laxalt — an outcome that has looked increasingly likely with each new batch of Democratic-based mail-in ballots — Democrats would retain control of the Senate no matter what. will happen in the Georgia election -far from. (In a 50-50 Senate vote, Vice President Kamala Harris ties.) The story continues Retaining the Senate despite this year’s high inflation — and a long-running pattern of midterm backlash against the president’s party in power — will be seen as one of the more surprising results of an election in which Democrats fared much better than expected. It would make Joe Biden the first Democratic President since John F. Kennedy in 1962 to not only retain control of the upper house of Congress, but potentially even expand his majority there. Kelly’s victory shows that in what should have been a favorable year for Republicans, there are limits to the appeal of hard-right politics in a key state like Arizona. Masters was propelled to the front of a crowded GOP primary field this summer with the support of former President Donald Trump — and at least $15 million in super-PAC funding from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, his longtime boss and mentor. . However, for months, Masters trailed Kelly in the polls. As recently as September, the incumbent Democrat led by nearly 9 percentage points, on average. At the time, the super-PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell canceled about $18 million in fall ads it had planned to air in Arizona after concluding that other states were more profitable. Only in the final weeks of the campaign — amid an influx of spending from outside groups tied to Thiel and Trump and a worsening national environment for Democrats — did the numbers begin to shift in Masters’ favor. Final polls showed a race that was within the margin of error. Blake Masters, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, speaks at a campaign rally attended by former President Donald Trump at Legacy Sports USA on Oct. 9 in Mesa, Ariz. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) In the end, though, it wasn’t enough. Master slammed Kelly as a rubber stamp for Joe Biden who was too soft on border issues. But with a huge fundraising advantage — as of Sept. 30, Kelly had raised $73.1 million to the Masters’ $9.7 million — the Democrat was able to cement his image as an independent moderate. Kelly also blasted Masters over abortion. In the GOP primary, the Republican had embraced a national abortion ban, then tried to soften his stance in the fall by scrubbing his website and agreeing to a 15-week ban. It probably didn’t hurt that in recent months, Kelly “helped sink one of Joe Biden’s labor candidates, pushed the president to open new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and slammed the administration for lifting pandemic-era restrictions on southern border. ,” according to Politico. Although a reliable vote for Biden’s agenda, several of Kelly’s TV ads described him as “working with Republicans” and “standing[ing] all the way to the left.” In a debate last month, he went so far as to describe some of Biden’s immigration decisions as “dumb.” The Master, meanwhile, made no secret of his interest in fringe beliefs. When asked in March to name a “subversive thinker” more people should know about, he chose anti-tech terrorist Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. He also promoted the idea that the January 6, 2021 riot was a “false flag” operation and said that “black people, frankly” are responsible for gun violence in many cities. As a result, preliminary exit polls showed Kelly defeating Masters among independents — who, at 40 percent, made up a larger share of the Arizona electorate than Democrats (27 percent) or Republicans (33 percent) — by a significant margin. 55% to 39% margin. . Typically, the president’s party loses independents by double-digit percentages in midterm years. Among self-described moderates — a full 42% of the Arizona electorate — Kelly won by 30 percentage points. In the end, most Arizona voters (54%) simply said Masters was “too extreme.” Far fewer (43%) said the same about Kelly.
