With the world now quarantined and sports totally canceled, many are now wondering how to spend their time. Thankfully, I’m here to break down a Senate race that has been interesting me as of late, given that we’re now in an election year and more polling of the general election is starting to flood in. Democrats need a net gain of three seats (along with the Presidency) to take back the US Senate and Arizona is one of the most crucial seats to make that happen, where former astronaut and political activist Mark Kelly (D) is taking on appointed incumbent Martha McSally (R). McSally served in the US House from 2015-2019 and then ran for Senate in the 2018 election, losing narrowly in an open seat race to Kyrsten Sinema (D). McSally was then appointed to the other Senate seat (this one) by Governor Doug Ducey after the death of longtime Senator John McCain in August 2018. McSally is now seeking election in this fall’s special election against Kelly.
Where does this race stand currently? And what should we expect moving forward? That’s what this article is attempting to examine. Let’s start with what the polls are telling us:
A look at the polls right now
| Pollster |
dates |
kelly (D) |
Mcsally (R) |
| NBC/Marist |
Mar. 10-15 |
48% |
45% |
| Monmouth |
Mar. 11-14 |
50% |
44% |
| LatinoDecisions |
Mar. 6-11 |
48% |
36% |
| OH Predictive |
Mar. 3-4 |
49% |
42% |
| PPP |
Mar. 2-3 |
47% |
42% |
| High Ground |
Feb. 7-9 |
46% |
39% |
Kelly has now led every single public (non-internal) poll taken this year and what has been most surprising is how quickly the challenger has approached 50%. In most polling of tossup races this early in an election year, the candidates are in the low 40s as many voters have yet to tune in. If a candidate is close to or over 50%, it is almost always the incumbent. In Arizona however, it’s the complete opposite, with Mark Kelly being the one to approach 50%, while McSally, the incumbent, sits in the low 40s. Yes, McSally is an appointed incumbent, which in theory gives her a much smaller incumbency advantage than a normal Senator. That said, she is now in her second straight statewide race after running in one that saw over $30 M in ads spent less than two years ago. Most voters in Arizona should know her name.
The problem for McSally seems to be the combination of facing a challenger who has built a strong brand so far, while failing to bolster her own favorability ratings. The Monmouth poll showed her with a -4 net favorable rating among voters (35/39), meanwhile Kelly has a +24 rating (41/17), as he’s been able to build up his own name very well. Since being named to the Senate at the start of 2019, McSally’s approval numbers have never been good, with the most recent Morning Consult survey pegging her approval at a similar -3 (37/40). It should also be noted that the above polling are from pretty reputable pollsters. NBC/Marist had Sinema +3 in their final likely voter poll of the 2018 race (the final margin was Sinema +2.4), while OH Predictive actually had McSally +1 in their final poll in 2018. HighGround produced a similar McSally +2 in their last 2018 survey. The point is, even in polls that overestimated Republicans in 2018, McSally is trailing, and the average of the six polls above has McSally trailing by 6.66 points. From a polling perspective, Republicans are behind the eight ball here.
The fundraising game
Another clear issue with McSally’s campaign is the fact that she’s getting smoked in the fundraising department. Since hitting the campaign trail Mark Kelly has proved to be a terrific fundraiser, as he raked in $6.3 M in Q4 of 2019, which left the former astronaut with $13.6 M cash-on-hand. In the 2019 calendar year he raised an astonishing $20 M, and that is in the year before the election(!). For reference, in her victorious 2018 campaign, Kyrsten Sinema raised $22.2 M total. In the final full quarter before the election (Q3 2018), Sinema raised just under $7 M. Kelly raised almost that much nine months before the election. McSally, to her credit, is not doing a bad job fundraising. She raised over $4 M in Q4, but the issue is simply being outgunned right now. Normally, an incumbent Senator who has served in Congress for years should have a clear advantage in fundraising. But here again, Kelly has run circles around McSally, and has more money to continue to build his candidate image, while McSally has less to solve her polling problem.
Arizona’s changing partisanship
Just a few years ago, Arizona was considered a staunchly Republican state. Mitt Romney carried the state by 9 points in 2012, even while Obama was winning nationally by 4 points, and the state’s native son, John McCain, also won the state by 9 in 2008 while Obama was winning nationally by 7 points. But in 2016 Trump under-performed that, winning the state by just 3.5, while the popular vote was much narrower nationally, at Clinton +2. In 2018 Democrats put their sights on Arizona and targeted the state extensively, especially the Sinema-McSally Senate race that has been mentioned often in this piece. They flipped that seat, and Secretary of State candidate Katie Hobbs also narrowly won her race as well, and Team Blue enters 2020 embolden by their Midterm success in the Valley of the Sun.
Shift between 2018 Senate race and 2012 Presidential race in Arizona, by congressional district
But what is causing this change in Arizona’s political makeup? I wrote more extensively about this in a piece published late last year that you can read here. But the gist is rather simple: Arizona is a highly urban/suburban state, with a ton of the state’s vote share coming from the Phoenix metropolitan area. Indeed Maricopa County, which contains Phoenix and almost all of its suburbs, cast just over 60% of the state’s total votes in the 2018 Midterm, and Pima County (Tucson) cast another 16.4% in that election. Given that the national trend has overwhelmingly been a rise in Democratic vote share in suburbs, this spells particularly bad news for the Republicans in Arizona.
The above map shows the shift between the 2018 Senate race and the 2012 Presidential race. The districts that have seen the most swift shift away from the Republicans are the 9th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Congressional Districts. Of the 9 districts in the state, the latter three are three of the four whitest (by citizen voting age population) in the state, including the 6th, which is the whitest at 81%. Moreover, the 5th, 6th, and 8th districts are the three districts with the highest median income in the state and are three of the four most highly educated. Essentially, the biggest source of pro-Democratic growth in Arizona has been in places that are white, well educated, and wealthier, which fits broadly in line with national trends. Those districts are all suburbs of Phoenix and contain a number of older, retired voters as well. While the Hispanic vote plays an important role in Arizona politics, they were a core constituency of the Democratic base back in 2008 and 2012, when the party was not winning statewide. The change has been the addition of these higher income suburban white voters, and given how heavily urban/suburban Arizona is, that addition has turbocharged the Democratic Party and put together a winning coalition. The question now is whether Mark Kelly and Joe Biden can keep it together.
So let’s talk about the Presidential Election
Senate elections have become increasingly tied to Presidential partisanship in recent years, something that the 2016 election cycle demonstrated to a tee. Every single state that voted for a Republican Senate candidate voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and the same was true for Democratic Senate candidates and Clinton, the first time in history that every state had perfectly aligned their Senate and Presidential results. Thus, in many states, we should look to presidential partisanship to get an idea of how the Senate race will shake out. Martha McSally seemed to have learned this lesson perfectly, as she decided to hitch her wagon to President Trump and seems to be riding or dying with the President. The Congresswoman once-defined by her independent streak and former military credentials as she held down a blue-leaning swing district has since become a hardcore pro-Trump Senator. Evidence of that includes when she called a CNN reporter a “liberal hack” and refused to respond to an interview, as well as the fact she has now voted with the President on 94.7% of key votes, per FiveThirtyEight’s Trump Score metric.
So the question is whether McSally’s decision to buddy up to Trump was a smart one. It’s tough to make an exact judgement on this one, because on one hand, Trump did carry the state in 2016, as mentioned in the above section. But he was also at just 48% of the vote and his approval rating in Arizona has generally been narrowly underwater. The Civiqs Tracker puts it at 46% approve, 52% disapprove, while Morning Consult’s numbers show it generally in the same territory, although better in February. The Fox News Voter Analysis survey put Trump at -2 approval in Arizona in 2018, and this tends to follow the same line.
On the flip side of the Presidential race is the reality that Kelly probably got a huge boost recently: that Joe Biden became the Democratic front runner. In a state known for its old school conservatism and large population of seniors/retirees, Joe Biden is no doubt the stronger candidate for Democrats to run in Arizona. While Sanders’ strength with Hispanic voters is important, as noted above the bluing of Arizona has happened because of a revolt among moderate former-Republican voters in the Phoenix suburbs, not because of Hispanics. The dichotomy between the more moderate Kyrsten Sinema (victorious) and the more progressive David Garcia (blowout loss) in the 2018 Midterm cycle is perhaps instructive. Biden’s strength among older voters and his more mainstream Democratic views are more in line with what the ideal Democratic candidate in Arizona would look like, as opposed to Sanders. If Sanders were leading the ticket, Kelly would be faced with some interesting questions in his quest to be a Sinema-esque moderate voice. Instead, he will get to calmly back Biden and dodge all those questions (Sinema has endorsed Biden herself), getting to focus on the Senate race. For reference, Biden currently leads Trump by an average of 3 points in Arizona polls.
It should also be noted that while Presidential partisanship and Senate results are now closely tied, they are not exact, and Arizona’s Senate race seems to be one of these cases. Of the six polls listed in the table above, five also published results for a Biden vs. Trump head-to-head. Kelly is running ahead of Biden’s margin by 2, 3, 4, 1, and 4 points, showing how at least right now, McSally hasn’t even properly tied herself to Trump, given that she’s sagging behind the President’s numbers in the present. For all those who have admonished McSally for her decision to hitch herself to Trump, they first have to explain why she’s trailing the top-line Presidential numbers first.
Conclusion
So on the whole where does the race stand now? If we were doing a race rating system, it definitely seems closer to leaning Democratic than to tossup at this point in time. A lead in the polls of over 6 points is generally enough for me to rate a race as “leaning” to one party but also it’s early and the history of Democrats winning Arizona is relatively short, which gives me caution. However, it is rather clear that Kelly seems to have an upper hand at this point in time, and should this lead persist later into the year, this race will end up in “lean Democratic” then. For now, it’s a race Democrats should feel good about and McSally should be very nervous about. It’s important to remember that McSally trailed by quite a bit early on in the Sinema race before things pulled tight in the fall when comparing to this race. However, at this point in the 2018 cycle, McSally was busy battling it out in a contested primary with two more-conservative opponents, Joe Arpaio and Kelli Ward. This time she has the field to herself and is trailing by as much, if not more, than she ever did in 2018. So, this article’s headline still stands: McSally is in real trouble and the question now is whether she can turn it around. Or put another way, the question is whether this is a race that the Democrats can put away early in their quest for the Senate majority this fall.
