Kari Lake Ahead, Masters Surging in Arizona

It will come down to the wire in Arizona, but the signals look better and better for the GOP in both major races. In a new Trafalgar poll commissioned by Daily Wire, Kari Lake’s lead has expanded to nearly three points over Democrat and debate-refusenik Katie Hobbs, just a skosh outside the margin of error.

Meanwhile, Republican challenger Blake Masters is just a point back from incumbent Senator Mark Kelly, who clearly isn’t closing the sale with Arizona voters:

Republicans are close to holding Arizona’s governor’s seat and potentially flipping a U.S. Senate seat, according to a new Trafalgar Group/Daily Wire poll.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is ahead of her Democratic opponent, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, with a lead just inside the poll’s 2.9-point margin of error: 49.2% to 46.4%. Republican Blake Masters at 46.4% is running close behind incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly (47.4%).

The poll consists of responses from 1,078 likely 2022 general election voters taken on October 16-17.

In both cases, the Democrats’ biggest problem resides in the White House, especially among the undecideds. That could impact both races, Robert Cahaly told the Daily Wire:

“Most of the undecideds have a negative opinion about how Biden is handling his job as president, 55.9% in the Senate race and 56.9% in Governors race,” Trafalgar founder Robert Cahaly told The Daily Wire.

Want to guess how they’ll break in the last three weeks? Oh, let’s not always see the same hands …

Trafalgar’s demos are interesting in both races, too. In the Senate race, Kelly leads among all of the non-white demos except for “other,” while Masters only has a two-point lead among white voters. However, Masters gets 45% of the Hispanic vote, 36% of the black vote, and 39% of the Asian vote, very large percentages for any Republican candidate and a signal of danger for Democrats. Lake does slightly better among black voters (39%) and Hispanics (46%), while winning among white voters by nearly eight points.

In other words, the competitiveness of Lake and Masters isn’t some kind of evidence of “white supremacy.” It’s a demonstration of a fairly broad appeal among all four candidates, with the election clearly being decided on lines other than ethnic signaling.

The one weakness both Republicans have may be in their own party. Both have narrow leads among independents, but Lake loses 13% of Republicans to Hobbs and Kelly takes 14% of Republicans away from Masters. One has to wonder, though, whether the debate between Masters and Kelly and Hobbs’ refusal to debate may change that. If Republicans come home in the final days of this cycle, these races might end up being easy wins for both Lake and Masters.

RCP shows this result right in line with their aggregation for Lake. It’s pretty close to the aggregate for the Senate race too, so Trafalgar’s results don’t look like an outlier. They look more like a momentum test, especially when combined with this report from Politico on the GOP’s gathering

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