Arizona Senate Polls: Kari Lake Gets Bad News

Kari Lake, the Republican Senate candidate in Arizona and a prominent ally of Donald Trump, is far behind her Democratic rival, according to a new poll.

The A Morning Consult poll conducted between August 30 and September 8 shows that Lake She is eight points behind her opponent, MP Ruben Gallego, with 41 percent compared to 49 percent of 901 likely voters.

Other recent polls have shown Gallego, who represents Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, leading Lake by double digits. An Aug. 28 poll by Redfield and Wilton Strategies showed the Democrat 15 points ahead of his opponent.

It was the second poll in August to show Gallego with a double-digit lead, after an August 5 HighGround poll showed him with an 11-point lead over Lake.

In an interview with talk radio station KTAR, Lake dismissed the polls, saying that “nobody wins by 15 points.”

“I don’t put any stock in those polls,” Lake said. “The ones you mentioned, the public polls, were just absolute garbage. I mean, that’s absolutely insane. 15 points, are you serious? I mean, nobody wins by 15 points, OK?”

She added that it was “a testament to the strength of our campaign” that her own polls showed a “tie”.

A JL Partners poll funded by Lake’s campaign in July showed her leading Gallego by one percentage point, while a Republican-funded Remington Research Group poll, also in July, showed the two candidates tied.

The JL Partners survey is the only one conducted since March in which Lake is ahead.

Other polls showed a smaller lead of 1 to 7 points for Gallego.

Newsweek has reached out to Lake and Gallego’s campaigns via email for comment.

Lake rose to national prominence as a figure in former President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement after she resigned as a news anchor to run for governor of Arizona in 2021. Her campaign focused on securing the U.S.-Mexico border, protecting gun rights, and protesting COVID-19 lockdowns, “cancel culture” and “woke” school curricula.

She and Gallego are vying for Arizona’s 3rd District seat after incumbent Kyrsten Sinema leaves the Democratic Party to become an independent in December 2023.

Throughout her campaign, Lake has tried to downplay Gallegos’ lead in the polls, previously telling KTAR that Gallegos’ support was due to his campaign spending heavily on ads designed to conceal his alleged past as a “radical.”

“Ruben has spent tens of millions of dollars; I just heard recently that there were $44 million worth of ads to portray him as a moderate,” Lake said. “Well, we know he’s a radical. And I’ve endured tens of millions of dollars on attack ads, and his numbers haven’t changed.”

“We found in some polls that if people even know a little bit about his voting habits, he loses three points,” she added. “So our polls show that it’s a neck-and-neck race… you know, it’s a neck-and-neck race.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Lake’s campaign team said in a press release that there was “enthusiasm” for her candidacy.

“Any poll showing a large lead for either candidate simply flies in the face of Arizona’s electoral history and the current political landscape,” the campaign said. “High-quality polling confirms what we are seeing on the ground – enthusiasm for Kari Lake’s campaign continues to grow as Election Day approaches.”

In Arizona’s 3rd District, voters had chosen a Republican candidate in every election since 1986. But that changed in 2022, when a Democrat won the seat.

That same year, Lake lost the Arizona gubernatorial election by a narrow margin of 49.7 percent to 50.3 percent to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Like Trump, after her defeat she claimed the election was “rigged” and launched a series of unsuccessful lawsuits to overturn the result.

In 2023, she lost the lawsuit and her lawyers were fined $2,000 for “false statements of fact.”

Arizona has fluctuated in the race for governor: a Democrat was elected in 2022, Republican governors were elected in the three previous elections, and Democrats were elected in the two previous elections. Between 1986 and 1998, the state elected only Republican governors.

Meanwhile, Arizona is also a swing state in the presidential election: Trump is currently ahead by 0.6 points, 46.3 points ahead of Harris, 45.7 points, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Harris was ahead in the state for nearly a month, but on September 4, Trump took the lead again.

With the exception of 2020 and 1996, when Democrats were elected, Arizona voters have chosen a Republican presidential candidate in every election.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s forecast, Trump is likely to win this state.