Kari Lake confident remaining ballots will go GOP’s way: ‘We’re going to win this’

PHOENIX – Republican Kari Lake expressed confidence Friday that she will overtake Democrat Katie Hobbs in the race to be Arizona’s next governor once all the votes from Tuesday’s election are tallied.

“We’re going to win this … 100% we’re going to win this,” Lake told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show. “And I think the whole ticket’s going to win.”

“I think Blake [Masters] may even win, and Mark Finchem may even win, and Abe [Hamadeh] will win.”

Lake, Masters (U.S. Senate), Finchem (secretary of state) and Hamadeh (attorney general) were all trailing their Democratic opponents based on results reported as of Friday morning, but hundreds of thousands of ballots hadn’t yet been tallied.

And Republicans think the outstanding ballots will tip the races in their favor.

Maricopa County, the state’s largest county, had approximately 350,000 ballots left to count as of Thursday night.

That included a record 290,000 early ballots that were submitted on Election Day. Those ballots have to be processed and signature-verified before they can be tabulated, which is expected to take several more days.

Hobbs was leading Lake 50.7%-49.3% as of Friday morning, a margin of 26,979 votes.

Lake said voters who distrust the system are more likely to have waited until the last day to turn in their ballots, and they are more likely to support the Republican ticket.

“Those are folks who don’t like the way that the elections have been run, they don’t trust the way the elections are run,” she said.

“Those are people who are voting for me, and they’re going to go heavily in my favor.”

Lake said she expects anywhere from 60% to nearly 80% of the ballots dropped off on Election Day to favor the GOP.

“If it’s in the upper part of that, then everyone’s going to win on the Republican ticket,” she said.

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