Following the release of the latest batch of counted votes, Arizona Democrat Katie Hobbs has defeated Republican Kari Lake in the Arizona gubernatorial race.
Hobbs’ victory was called by the Associated Press and other media outlets Monday night, shortly after authorities released more counted votes, including more than 70,000 from Maricopa county, center of the Phoenix metro area.
Current totals have Hobbs receiving 50.4%,% of the vote to Lake’s 49.6%. Hobbs’ vote total now stands at 1,265,331, an increased of 30,824 since the last tally; Lake’s total now stands at 1,244,850.
According to NBC News, there are approximately 64,819 votes – 3% of the total – left to count. With Lake down by 20,481 she would have needed to win 42,651 in order to overcome Hobbs’ lead.
While there are still votes yet to be counted, with the latest results it has become mathematically impossible for Lake to overcome Hobbs’ lead.
Lake, a prominent supporter of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that Donald Trump won, is only the latest Trump ally and election denier to lose in 2022. Candidates back by Trump lost in races all over the U.S., including in Washington state District 3, where Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez defeated a Trump supporting Republican candidate with ties to white supremacists.
Lake has baselessly called the integrity of the 2022 election into question multiple times before Monday. For instance, on Nov. 8 Lake went on camera and called the race “botched” after technicians were dispatched to voting sites across Maricopa County to fix dozens of malfunctioning vote tabulation machines.
Election officials confirmed there were some technical issues with about one in four machines at polling sites in Maricopa County, but reiterated that one was prevented from voting.
Meeting with reporters in downtown Phoenix Tuesday, Republican Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said “Everyone is still getting to vote. No one has been disenfranchised.”
“When we test these machines, that’s part of the process. We go through it for every election,” Gates added.
Prior to her loss, Lake also vowed she would be the media’s ‘worst fricking nightmare’ if she won.