“Arpaio and Ward never endorsed McSally. They should have shown unity with the Republican candidate, very disappointed with both of them.”
If this is true, then the AZ GOP is an even bigger dumpster fire than I thought.
On the other hand, a lot of folks see McSally as the successor to McCain.
The fact that republican governor Ducey trounced his opponent but McSally couldn’t pull it out says some pretty bad things about McSally as a candidate.
Ward did an ad for McSally. I heard it for the first time 2 days before the election, IIRC. Too late to be much good in a state where most people have voted a week before Election Day.
Here were the early votes by Party Registration:
Dem = 495,013
Ind = 345,201
Rep = 611,022
Total 1,451,236
My crude analysis the day before the Election (emailed to some friends):
The last CNN poll said Sinema 52% to 44% McSally. If so, Sinema would have around 674,500 votes so far, and McSally would be around 763,000. That would give McSally 52.5% of the total vote, with around 75% of the votes already cast.
But that assumed Republicans all voted for McSally. Obviously they did not. And the early the vote was cast, the more likely it seems to have been for Sinema.
One thing that hurt McSally: A bitter primary fight that ended in late August. McSally took 51% in the primary. And then needed to convince the other 49% to vote for her with ballots being cast by mid-October.
Meanwhile, Sinema ran ads unopposed all summer long.