The results of two large batches of votes cast in Maricopa County on Wednesday night have not changed the race for Arizona’s U.S. Senate. Democrat Ruben Galego has maintained a slight lead over Republican Kari Lake.

Lake’s overnight lead was halved by the latest unofficial state population center results.

Maricopa County is still counting hundreds of thousands ballots. Gallego’s lead appeared fragile, as Republicans were showing greater strength than expected across the nation.

Gallego posted on Wednesday that he expected to hold his lead.

In a tweet he sent earlier that day, he stated: “We’re watching closely as the results come in and we feel very optimistic.”

Lake’s own posts urged her followers to correct their provisional votes in a race that she believes will remain close.

This race will be decided by the last few votes! “We need to have ALL hands on deck in order to ensure that every Arizonan’s vote counts”, she said.

In the last weeks of the race, public polling showed that Lake, an ex-Fox 10 newscaster had narrowed Gallego’s long-standing lead in the race for the replacement of retiring U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz). In the final polling week, he held a three-percentage point lead.

On Wednesday night, Democrats have already lost control of both the Senate and the House. However, incumbent Democrats are still in tight races for Nevada and Pennsylvania. In these contests, more votes have already been counted in comparison to Arizona.

Gallego is a five-term congressman who hopes to be the first Latino to hold the position in Arizona and the only one nationally. Lake, a five-term member of Congress, could be the first Republican woman to be elected to the Senate in Arizona.

Lake will win without the help of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky). He and his supporters treated Lake as a mere electoral afterthought, and never invested any money in the race.

The winner will succeed Sinema who was elected as a Democrat in 2018. This ended a 30-year electoral drought for the Democratic Party.

Gallego was leading in 79 out of 87 polls that were publicly available since Sinema left the race in March. However, Lake cut several percentage points from his lead during the last weeks of the race.

The Green Party’s Eduardo Quintana came in third place.

Sinema left the Democratic Party in 2022, and her fundraising ceased shortly thereafter. But for over a year, she remained coy about her plans to run again. This left the possibility of an unprecedented three-way race with an incumbent who was not in a major political party.

Sinema finished a distant third on public polls before officially quitting the race.

Gallego entered the race weeks after Sinema had left the Democrats. He never faced a challenger for the Democratic nomination.

He left the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus, and changed his rhetoric regarding border issues.

Gallego said Arizona cities are on the front lines of this border crisis. This was a different tone from his 2017 congressional testimony, when he stated that Trump’s border wall was trying to solve a non-existent problem.

Lake’s road to the GOP nomination, on the other hand, was more bumpy.

Lake, who narrowly lost the 2022 gubernatorial election, continued to push for a court challenge to the results. It didn’t work out, but Lake remained in the public spotlight with a viewpoint that was increasingly at odds with public opinion.

She was seen as a likely candidate for Senate, but did not officially enter the race until 2023. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb had entered the race six months earlier but was unable to raise enough money because of a head-start.

Lake’s videotaped endorsement of former President Donald Trump set the tone for an election based on his agenda.

Priority number one was border security, and the completion of Trump’s wall. She blamed illegal immigration for crime, Arizona’s housing crisis and inflation.

McConnell was the notable exception. She quickly gained the support of many Republicans in the Senate.

McConnell cited “candidate-quality” concerns for several Senate races by 2024, and the political action committees that were aligned to him did not invest in these contests. This included Lake’s campaign.

Her party was not the only one to experience turbulence.

Lake ousted the Arizona Republican Party chairman in January after leaking an audio recording of a conversation that took place 10 months ago. Jeff DeWit informed Lake that “very powerful people” wanted to keep her out of the Senate race. He urged Lake to set a price for her decision to withdraw.

The recording was released just before the annual party meeting. She declined his offer. The Republican operatives claimed that the recording was leaked to warn others who were suspicious of Lake.

Lake made the slur in a candidate forum held in May, calling Lamb “a coward” when it came to election integrity. This insult led nine out of 14 sheriffs from across the state to condemn Lake’s remark. Lamb supported Lake after she lost the primary in July and appeared with her on stage at least one time.

Other prominent Arizona Republicans, however, were not as enthusiastic about Lake’s support.

Former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey supported her after her primary win, but did not make high-profile public appearances. Karrin Taylor-Robson, Lake’s most likely Republican opponent in 2022, also followed this pattern.

When Lake attempted to claim that she was only making fun of the late U.S. Senator John McCain, R.-Ariz. in a series comments from 2022 his daughter Meghan McCain made it clear that this wasn’t funny. The feud between the McCains and moderate Republicans, or even more generally, continued.

Gallego used his millions and time to define himself on screens all over the state for several months. He portrayed himself as rising from Chicago’s poverty, achieving Harvard University and serving his country in Iraq as a Marine. Gallego has promised many times to “fight” in Washington for Arizonans of working class.

His Democratic allies also reminded the viewers that Lake had supported a territorial law from 1864 that prohibited abortions in almost all situations. This issue has gained new significance since the Arizona Supreme Court upheld this law in April.

Lake was torn by her desire to acknowledge that the 19th century law “is not where the people are,” and to maintain her personal opposition to the procedure, which she compared to “the execution a baby within the womb of its mother.”

Lake did not have the resources necessary to refute the attacks on a consistent basis, but she found her feet in the debate they had held in October.

She aggressively pressed Gallego about his voting record in Congress. He said he was more interested in what to call people who crossed the border without permission than actually doing anything.

Gallego responded that he had supported the bipartisan border-security bill introduced by Sine