Kari Lake Closing Gap in Senate Race, New Poll Shows

Republican Senate hopeful Kari Lake has closed the gap on Democratic U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego with just days left in Arizona’s 2024 U.S. Senate race, according to a new poll.
Lake, a Trump-backed candidate who lost her bid in Arizona’s gubernatorial race in 2022, has trailed Gallego for weeks as both seek to fill independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s. A former Democrat, Sinema is not seeking reelection.
The race could play a key role in which party controls the Senate in the new term. Democrats at the moment hold the edge in the upper chamber of Congress with a slim 51-seat majority, in part thanks to independents like Sinema, who caucus with the party. But several forecasters have projected that Republicans have a chance to flip the chamber next week.
In a recent poll from AtlasIntel, Lake appeared to gain ground on Gallego, as the Democrat now leads her among likely Arizonan voters by only half a percentage point (48.4 percent to 47.9 percent). The survey was conducted from October 25 to October 29 and has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points, meaning the gap between the candidates is too close to call.
In the same poll conducted earlier this month, Gallego was leading Lake by 4 points among 1,440 likely voters (50 percent to 46 percent).
According to polling aggregation sites like 538, Gallego holds a 6.2-point lead on Lake on average across statewide polling. The gap is a dip from the start of the month, however, when the Democratic nominee was up on Lake by 7.2 points on average.
The latest polling from AtlasIntel suggests that some voters may be casting a split ticket next week. While Gallego and Lake are practically tied in Arizona, former President Donald Trump is leading among likely voters in the key swing state, 50.8 percent to 47.3 percent. According to 538, Trump is ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona’s presidential race by 2.3 points on average.
According to a recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College, 10 percent of voters in Arizona plan to split their tickets, casting a ballot for Trump and Gallego.
That same survey conducted from October 7 to October 10, which includes the response of 808 likely voters, found Gallego leading Lake 48 percent to 41 percent.
Newsweek reached out to Lake and Gallego’s campaigns via email Tuesday for comment.
Lake garnered national attention after her first political run in 2022, where she repeatedly contested Arizona Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs’ victory by claiming that the election was fraudulent. Lake’s legal challenges were repeatedly dismissed in court.
During an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday, Lake was asked seven different times whether she would accept that she lost the election to Hobbs, to which the Senate hopeful responded, “Why are we looking backward?”
“I’m looking forward to what is coming up,” Lake added while avoiding to answer Collins’ question. “I’m looking forward to November 5 and this huge election, and the people of our state are caring about what’s coming up, what’s going forward.”