MSNBC has declared Democrat Mark Kelly the projected winner of the Arizona Senate race over Republican Blake Masters after new results were announced by Maricopa and Pima counties. In Nevada, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto pulled within 1,000 votes of Republican Adam Laxalt.
If Cortez Masto wins the Nevada race, Democrats would retain control of the U.S. Senate with 50 seats. Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a vote to break ties.
Democrats could gain one more seat if Sen. Raphael Warnock wins the Dec. 6 runoff against Republican Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker.
On Friday night, Maricopa County released another batch of votes that included mail ballots dropped off at voting centers on Election Day. Republicans had hoped that these votes would trend toward Masters as they did for Donald Trump in 2020. Trump narrowed the gap but still lost Arizona to Joe Biden.
The votes released Friday night showed MSNBC to declare Democrat Adrian Fontes the winner of the race for Arizona Secretary of State over Republican Mark Finchem, a Trump-backed, MAGA extremist, election denier.
It also boosted the chances of Democrat Katie Hobbs, the current Secretary of State, to avoid being overtaken in the governor’s race by Republican Kari Lake, another Trump-backed election denier.
With 83% of the vote reported, Kelly had 1,128,917 votes (51.8%), while Masters had 1,005,001 votes (46.1% . Kelly’s margin has now expanded to about 125,000 votes after the latest vote tallies from Maricopa (Phoenix-area) and Pima (Tucson-area) counties.
In Nevsada, Cortez Masto began the day trailing Laxalt by about 9,000 votes. But Friday evening a new batch of mail ballots from Clark County (Las Vegas-area) and Washoe County (Reno-area) cut Laxalt’s lead to 821 votes.
With thousands of votes still outstanding in Clark and Washoe counties, Cortez Masto is positioned to overtake Laxalt and take the lead when more vote tallies are released.
With 94% of the vote counted, Laxalt had 467,208 votes, while Cortez Masto had 466,387 (48.4%).
59,494 votes (48.5%), while Cortez Masto had 458,696 (48.4%), a margin of 821 votes.
If Democrats win the Nevada race and Warnock wins the Georgia runoff, Democrats would hold a 51-49 margin in the Senate. That would lessen the influence of Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.