PHOENIX — Incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly secured a six-year term in the Senate late Friday after a "red wave'' of votes from Maricopa County failed to materialize.
Of the nearly 75,000 votes reported by the state's largest county Friday, Kelly picked up 40,719 of them compared to 32,378 for Republican Blake Masters. That boosted Kelly's statewide total to 52% of the total ballots counted so far in the race to Masters' 46%, with Libertarian Marc Victor making up the balance.
There are still about 370,000 votes to be counted in the state. Most of those were early ballots that were dropped off at Maricopa County polling places on Election Day.
It was those day-of ballots that Masters, along with gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake, had argued would swing so heavily in favor of GOP contenders to erase the leads the Democrats had held pretty much since the first results were announced Tuesday night.
That didn't happen. And at this point Masters would have to pick up two thirds of those remaining uncounted votes to take the lead, something the latest figures show is unlikely to happen.
Lake also found herself drifting farther behind Democrat Katie Hobbs who, like Kelly, picked up more of those newly announced votes than her Republican foe.
It wasn't all bad news for GOP contenders.
Yavapai County added another 10,087 votes on Friday, with the margins there going 3-1 for Republicans. But that was offset by Pima County's 24,637 new votes breaking 2-1 for Democrats.
The bottom line left Hobbs on Friday night with 50.7% against Lake's 49.3% — leaving the race too close to call but still within Lake's grasp if close to 55% of the uncounted ballots swing her way. Hobbs has about a 31,000-vote lead.
It would appear, however, the race for secretary of state, like that for the Senate, is over.
Democrat Adrian Fontes added nearly 41,000 new votes Friday from Maricopa County in his bid to be the state's chief elections officer against fewer than 32,000 for Republican Mark Finchem.
Fontes now leads the race by more than 118,000 votes, 52.8% of the total — a bigger margin than even Kelly's — putting Finchem in the difficult and likely nearly impossible position of having to pick up two thirds of all remaining votes.
Too close to call is the race for attorney general, even as Democrat Kris Mayes picked up more votes from Maricopa County on Friday than Republican Abe Hamadeh. Mayes now has 50.4% of the vote, with a 19,151-vote lead.
The same is true in the bid by Democrat Kathy Hoffman to get a new term as state schools chief. Even with a boost on Friday, she has only 50.2% of the vote against Republican Tom Horne and is leading by 6,665.
Of the approximately 370,000 votes yet to be counted, more than 265,000 are from Maricopa County. And the lion's share of those are early ballots dropped off on Election Day — the ballots that Republicans have been insisting are bound to go their way.
Unlike in other countries, elections in the U.S. are highly decentralized, complex and feature a long list of races, from the national level down to town council seats.
