Despite Newsmax and several other news media outlets calling the Arizona Senate race for incumbent Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly, GOP challenger Blake Masters said Saturday that he is not yet willing to concede the race with thousands of ballots outstanding.
"For my people who knocked on doors in 115 degree heat, and for the million+ Arizonans who put their faith in me, we are going to make sure every legal vote is counted," Masters posted on Twitter Saturday. “If, at the end, Senator Kelly has more of them than I do, then I will congratulate him on a hard-fought victory. But voters decide, not the media; let's count the votes."
As of Saturday, the Newsmax election tracker reports the Democratic senator leading Masters 1,131,730 votes to 1,006,490 votes with 89% of the votes counted.
Joining Newsmax in calling the race for Kelly were The Associated Press, NBC, ABC, CNN, Reuters and USA Today.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that it could take as many as 12 days following Tuesday's voting to have the final election results for races in that state.
"Here is the issue: We have so many close races that everyone is still paying attention to Maricopa County," Bill Gates, the Republican chair of the Maricopa County governing board, told reporters packed into the lobby this week. "Those other states, like Florida, those races were blowouts; no one is paying attention. This is how we do things in Maricopa County. We follow the law. These are the laws that were put in place by the state Legislature."
This year some 290,000 ballots were dropped off on Election Day at polling locations in the county, which includes the state's largest population centers including Phoenix.
According to the report, those ballots could not start to be counted until after Election Day.
Although Kelly's roughly five-point lead seems insurmountable, Republicans and the Masters camp believe that incoming votes that are yet to be counted will make up the difference and give him the upset victory, flipping the state red, the New York Post reported Saturday.
The Newsmax election tracker currently has the Senate tied at 49 seats each.
If Kelly holds Arizona, Republicans will likely have to win both Nevada and a Dec. 6 runoff race in Georgia between incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and GOP challenger Herschel Walker to grab the 51-vote majority.
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