While Republican voter turnout was up this year and Democrat turnout went down across Maricopa County, key GOP candidates still lost. Republicans outnumber Democrats in Arizona by more than 166,000 people. 74.5% of Maricopa Republicans voted, compared to 74.2% in 2018. Democrats had a voter turnout of 68.5% this year; 2018 saw a 69.9% voter turnout.
From The Western Journal:
Less understandable is the Hobbs win over Lake for the open governor’s seat. The Republican candidate held the lead in nearly every poll in the month-and-a-half period leading into the election and had a 3.5 percent advantage in the RCP average, yet Hobbs won by about 17,000 votes. ... One explanation for Lake coming up short in the vote tally, and what her campaign has pointed to, is the chaos that happened in Maricopa County on Election Day, when ballot tabulators and ballot printers were not functioning at 71 polling locations, according to the county — though the Lake campaign puts the number at 114, or 53 percent of the sites. Hours-long lines developed at multiple sites experiencing these problems, leading the Lake campaign to argue that since Republicans voted 3-to-1 over Democrats on Election Day, what happened was large-scale vote suppression of her supporters.
