Earlier this week, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced that she would not run for re-election, ending months of speculation about the possibility of a three-way contest. This development is a rare break of good news for Senate Democrats, for whom perfect conditions have not materialized: Joe Manchin is on track to be replaced by a Republican come 2025, and Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester also face uphill climbs to another term. But in Arizona, the absence of Sinema consolidates the center-left and the left behind presumptive Democratic nominee, Rep. Ruben Gallego.
Most of the discourse centered on whether Sinema’s presence on the ballot would have helped or hurt Democrats. Split Ticket’s analysis confirms public polling conclusions that her presence wouldn’t have affected the race much, because Sinema was drawing substantially from both the center-right and the center-left alike. In other words, the now-united left coalition is not appreciably better off than it would have been in a three-way race against Sinema and 2022 gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake.
Looking at public polling, Gallego leads Lake by high single digits in recent nonpartisan surveys of a two-way race. In the Noble Predictive Insights poll from February, Gallego is up by a full 10 points, 47–37. Lake’s net approval is at −9, while Gallego’s is at +21 — a full 30 points higher than his opponent. It is likely that the wear a campaign has on image will temper this advantage, but he does not appear to enter the 2024 cycle as an unpopular, embattled figure, unlike Lake, and there is little evidence to suggest he will become as unpopular as her.
In the Emerson College poll, also from February, Gallego is up by 7, 46–39. More importantly, in this particular poll, the presidential topline favors Republicans, with Trump beating Biden by 3 points. This is perhaps evidence of both Gallego’s strength as a candidate and Kari Lake’s weakness.
In theory, Sinema’s absence from the race now frees up many tens of thousands of moderate Republican voters to “come home” to Kari Lake. The one issue with this idea is that there is a considerable chasm between moderate Republicans and Kari Lake. Kari Lake is widely considered a political extremist who has routinely professed false allegations of electoral fraud, both in the 2020 presidential election and in her own loss against Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
Her candidacy was so toxic in 2022 that she ended up losing in an electorate that almost certainly voted for Donald Trump. And in the two years since, she has not changed her image much, with litigation of her 2022 loss dragging on for months, and her fiery threats against President Trump’s purported opponents.
With Lake’s weaknesses apparent, Gallego has a very strong shot at repeating the 2022 formula that Arizona Democrats succeeded in using: garnering strong independent and moderate Republican crossover by being the less disfavored and less extreme candidate.
Gallego’s strengths are magnified a bit next to Lake’s weaknesses. In the two most recent elections Gallego has run in, his Wins-Above-Replacement scores were D +4.1 (in 2022) and D +1.5 (in 2020). As he represents the Latino-majority 3rd congressional district in central Phoenix, he stands to have very high name recognition already from having won numerous elections in a key Democratic constituency.
Furthermore, Gallego has a significant fundraising advantage. The latest federal campaign finance reports show him with anywhere between a 6-to-1 and an 8-to-1 advantage in money raised, expenditures, and cash on hand. Lake’s failure to achieve parity will limit her ability to broaden her appeal and correct her unfavorables — and due to higher-priority GOP Senate targets in states like Ohio, Montana, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, she may not get as much funding as she would hope.
All of these factors appear to indicate Gallego having a narrow, but clear and consistent advantage over Lake. These data points lead to the conclusion that even with a competitive presidential election in the state, Gallego stands to outperform his comparatively unpopular ballot mate, the incumbent President.
Ratings change: Tossup to Leans Democratic
I’m a political analyst here at Split Ticket, where I handle the coverage of our Senate races. I graduated from Yale in 2021 with a degree in Statistics and Data Science. I’m interested in finance, education, and electoral data – and make plenty of models and maps in my free time.