JUST IN: Kari Lake Slashes Her Opponent’s Lead After Latest Ballot Drop

The long-awaited arrival of ballots from Arizona’s Maricopa County has brought good news to Kari Lake, the firebrand U.S. Senate candidate still in the running against Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).

The Lake campaign on Thursday night revealed that the Republican picked up 57.39% of the nearly 70,000-ballot drop from Maricopa County. The result puts her a hair’s width of overtaking Gallego’s 0.7% lead; he holds a 43,846-vote lead with over 75% of the vote counted, according to NBC News. A third-party candidate, Eduardo Quintana, managed to siphon away more than that, or 53,596 votes.

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LONG-AWAITED MARICOPA DROP

🔴 – LAKE: 40,422 (57.39%)

🔵 – GALLEGO: 28,789 (40.88%)

VERY GOOD! 👍

— Kari Lake War Room (@KariLakeWarRoom) November 8, 2024

At 3.9 million residents, Maricopa is by far the most populated part of the battleground state. The Phoenix-anchored county was the site of a contentious 2020 recount battle when President-elect Donald Trump asserted that President Joe Biden did not actually win the state. Lake, who ran for governor two years later, echoed that message during her own recount battle against Gov. Katie Hobbs, refusing to concede and pursuing all legal avenues before court challenges were finally exhausted.

Since then, Lake, 55, has modulated her message toward the center, appealing to moderate voters who backed Hobbs in 2022. At 52.5%, President Trump ran ahead of Lake by 4.4%, forcing her into a tightrope walk to keep both MAGA and moderate voters in her camp. She leaned heavily into immigration messaging, accusing Gallego of voting with the Biden-Harris administration to open a porous passageway along the state’s southern border. Her campaign garnered support from Trump as well as a majority of Republican senators eager to curry favor with one of the most pro-Trump challengers of the cycle.

On Thursday Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate David McCormick was declared the winner over Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), padding the party’s nascent majority and consigning the Democratic caucus to an even smaller minority. Republicans are now expected to hold at least 53 seats in the upper chamber, weakening the bargaining power of centrist members like Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME); assuming McCormick and other newly elected members like Tim Sheehy, Bernie Moreno, and Jim Justice are more agreeable with stringently conservative legislation, the GOP may be able to pass sweeping economic and social policies over the objections of both moderate senators. Lake’s race is the lone outlier yet to be called.

In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is inching ever closer to retaining the gavel in 2025, setting Republicans up for a trifecta of power over the federal government. Earlier this week a number of closely contested districts fell red, including the reelection of Reps. Young Kim (R-CA), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), and Mike Lawler (R-NY). Several Republican challengers also flipped Democratic seats — Republican Rob Bresnahan Jr. defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA), flipping a seat lost to the GOP during the 2018 midterms, and Republican Tom Barrett (R-MI) defeated Democrat Curtis Hertel, flipping a suburban seat in Michigan.

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