How Kari Lake Underperformed in Arizona Once Again

It was deja vu for Kari Lake in Arizona as she once again suffered election defeat.

The former TV news anchor has been a fixture of the national spotlight as one of President-elect Donald Trump’s biggest cheerleaders ever since her 2022 gubernatorial run in Arizona. That race she narrowly lost, despite all aggregate polls at the time having her ahead of eventual Democratic winner Katie Hobbs.

Now, Lake finds herself arguably the biggest Republican underperformer of the 2024 election after losing the Arizona Senate race to Democrat Ruben Gallego.

Lake, a staunch Trump ally and election denier, was declared the loser by the Associated Press on Tuesday. With 98 percent of votes counted, Gallego led Lake in Arizona by more than 2 points (50.1 percent to 47.7).

Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris by nearly 6 points (52.2 percent to 46.7) in Arizona, as the president-elect swept all seven main battleground states in the election. The results indicate that the split between Lake and Trump in Arizona was nearly 8 points, the largest of any Republican candidate in a competitive Senate race. As of Thursday, Trump had bagged 1.746 million votes in Arizona to Lake’s 1.574 million.

David Schultz, Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Hamline University in Minnesota, told Newsweek that Lake’s performance showed there was something wrong with either her as a candidate or her election strategy.

“In an election where Republicans appeared to win almost every close race, Lake stands out as doing worse here in Arizona than in 2022,” he said.

“Trump did not hurt her this time but should have helped. Trump’s coattails were not enough to save Lake, suggesting something about her message, strategy, or her as a candidate,” Schultz added.

Newsweek has contacted Lake’s team for comment via email.

Missed Opportunity

The only other Republican who had a bigger election misfire was North Carolina gubernatorial hopeful Mark Robinson. But the GOP had long given up on him as a candidate after his campaign was dogged by allegations of antisemitism and claims he described himself as a “Black Nazi” on a pornographic website’s message board more than a decade ago. He ended up losing the race by 14 points in a state which Trump won by 4 points.

While Republican Senate hopefuls Mike Rogers and Eric Hovde lost their competitive elections to Elissa Slotkin in Michigan and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, respectively, both margins were below 1 point. Trump won both these two battleground states by less than a point.

Republican Sam Brown also lost the competitive Nevada Senate race to the more favored Democratic candidate, Jacky Rosen (46.3 percent to 47.9), but the gap was only 5 points compared to Trump’s victory over Harris (50.6 percent to 47.5).

Arizona was a key opportunity for the GOP, however, and Lake had a genuine shot at winning. While polls frequently suggested that Gallego was the slight favorite to win the race against Lake, AtlasIntel, the most accurate pollster of the election, had the two candidates tied in their final poll conducted over the two days before the election.

Lake struggled to win over moderate Republicans needed for success in Arizona, including having a long-running and public feud with Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Arizona Senator John McCain. In September, the Arizona Republican Party paid for pro-Trump billboards boasting of “team unity,” which did not include Lake, potentially harming her election chances. Instead, the former president was pictured with JD Vance, Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tulsi Gabbard.

Senate’s First Latino

Gallego’s victory in Arizona will ultimately not significantly impact control of the upper chamber next year. The Republican Party had already flipped the Senate in this year’s election, with the final breakdown standing at 53-47 in favor of the GOP.

But Gallego did make history by becoming Arizona’s first Latino elected to the U.S. Senate.

“Gracias, Arizona,” Gallego posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, following the confirmation of his election win.