Republicans appear to be abandoning Donald Trump’s ally Kari Lake in the much-anticipated Arizona senate race.
New polling shows that Ms Lake, a key Trump backer in the state, has been unable to win over 17 per cent of voters who intend to support the former president in November.
These voters instead look set to split their ticket and vote for her Democrat challenger.
The rise of moderate and sceptical Republicans splitting their ticket in Arizona threatens Ms Lake’s campaign, in which she is running to replace the incumbent independent senator Kyrsten Sinema.
The Democratic candidate, Ruben Gallego, is more than ten point ahead of Ms Lake in the latest poll, conducted for Fox News.
Ticket splitting was once commonplace among both moderate Republican and Democrat voters, but is becoming increasingly rare amid greater polarisation between the two parties.
However, the Arizona race looks likely to be decided by those moderate voters, many of whom are unsettled by Ms Lake’s decision to deny the result of the 2020 senate race she lost to the Democrat Katie Hobbs.
The Fox poll shows 56 per cent of voters are intending to vote for Mr Gallego, compared with 42 who will vote for Ms Lake.
Mr Gallego’s support includes 16 per cent of registered Republicans and 17 per cent of those who say they will also vote for Trump.
Winfield Morris, a 62-year-old Republican farmer and rancher who will back Trump, told the AP he would not vote for Ms Lake.
“I don’t like Kari Lake and I’m not going to vote for her,” he said. “I don’t think she has what it takes.”
The senate election in Arizona has attracted significant media attention because of the state’s status as a battleground area in the presidential race.
An average of polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight shows Trump is ahead of Kamala Harris by one point, down from 2.3 points on August 1. In 2020, Joe Biden won Arizona by just 0.3 per cent of the vote.
Ms Lake, a former television news anchor, has become a well-known figure in GOP politics, addressing the party’s national convention in July and appearing next to Trump at a rally in Tucson on September 15.
At that event, Trump gave her a nickname, a badge of honour in MAGA circles, by referring to her as “Border Kari Lake”.
“She’s a fantastic person,” he said. “I’ve known her a long time, I was one of the early people that endorsed her and I’ll tell you she is tough, tough, tough on the border.”
After Trump’s election loss in 2020, Ms Lake was one of the most high-profile figures to publicly deny the result. She also challenged the result of her own senate race, launching unsuccessful lawsuits against her loss.
This year’s election in Arizona could have major implications for the overall arithmetic in the Senate, where the Democrats currently have a wafer-thin majority of two seats.
If Ms Lake was elected, her seat could overturn the majority, potentially giving Republicans both houses of Congress, if they maintain control of the House later this year.
