Kari Lake Vs. Katie Hobbs: Arizona Governor Election 2022 Results

Updated, 3:30 p.m. Wednesday

TUCSON, AZ — In what is likely one of the most closely watched gubernatorial elections in the country, voters decided Tuesday whether Republican Kari Lake or Democrat Katie Hobbs would succeed Doug Ducey as the next governor of Arizona.

Who voters chose could offer a glimpse into whether Arizonans have moved on from the state's 2020 presidential election when President Joe Biden narrowly defeated former President Donald Trump by only 10,000 votes.

Lake, a Trump-backed candidate, has relentlessly pushed baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent, while Hobbs as Secretary of State yielded death threats while vehemently defending the state's results.

Lake carried a 2.4-point lead over Hobbs on Election Day, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.

Patch will update this story with live vote totals as they come in. Refresh for the latest numbers available via The Associated Press:

• Hobbs (D): 910,801 (50.1 percent)
• Lake (R): 906,707 (49.9 percent)
• Percentage of precincts reporting: 67 percent

About 40 percent of Arizona ballots remained to be counted as of 2 a.m. Wednesday for many of the major races, according to the Associated Press.

The Maricopa County Elections Department on Wednesday estimated it had 400,000 ballots left to count, including 275,000 early ballots. Officials said results from 1.1 million ballots have been reported, and a new batch of results would likely be released Wednesday night.

In Maricopa County, tensions were high on Election Day as workers at 20 percent of the county's polling locations faced technical problems with tabulators. Election officials initially called the problem a "hiccup'; however, some GOP politicians and pundits immediately questioned the integrity of the state's election.

The issue, later attributed to faulty printers, prompted a coalition of Republican groups to file an emergency motion to extend poll hours in Maricopa County and to correct poll-worker errors, according to a National Review report. A judge denied the request shortly before 7 p.m., according to the Arizona Mirror.

Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County board of supervisors and a Republican, told reporters in downtown Phoenix that "everyone is still getting to vote," according to NBC News.

"No one has been disenfranchised," Gates said.

The Race For Arizona Governor

Regardless of who wins, Arizona is poised to have its fifth female governor, more than any other U.S. state. Trump's influence will also be put to the test in a battleground state where the former president's allies dominate much of the state's Republican party.

Arizona's gubernatorial race received intense national attention after the state's 2020 presidential election results. The election was the first time a Democrat nominee carried the state since Bill Clinton in 1996.

The 2020 election results became a "monomaniacal focus" for Lake, a former TV news anchor in Phoenix who launched her campaign for governor in 2021. Throughout her campaign, Lake battled with others in an industry she worked in for nearly three decades and made repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election the centerpiece of her campaign, according to a Politico report.

Multiple reviews in battleground states, including in Arizona, dozens of court cases, and Trump's own Department of Justice have f was no widespread fraud in the last presidential election.

Lake, 53, was born in Rock Island, Illinois, and grew up in Iowa. She spent 22 years working for KSAZ-TV in Phoenix before stepping down from her position in March 2021.

"Kari pursued a career in the news industry where she would become a symbol of truth in journalism when she rejected the agenda-driven press and walked away from the mainstream media after a highly successful 27 years," a statement on her campaign website reads.

Several years before Lake embraced the far-right politics of Trump, she registered as a Democrat the day after former President Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Iowa caucuses. She returned to the Republican party in 2012.

According to a report by 12 News, Lake left the Republican party because of her views on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

"There was a period of time when I really thought the Republican Party had lost its way with the endless wars," she said.

Lake earned Trump's endorsement in September 2021 and was supported by other far-right figures, including Rep. Paul Gosar, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, according to CNN.

Lake's primary victory against businesswoman and lawyer Karrin Taylor Robson was a blow to the GOP establishment that lined up behind her in an attempt to push their party past the chaotic Trump era.

Robson was supported by Gov. Ducey, former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

Hobbs, 52, has served as Arizona's secretary of state since 2019. She is a former Democratic member of the Arizona State Senate, representing District 24 from 2013 to 2019. She also served as state Senate minority leader from 2015 to 2019.

Hobbs also represented District 15 in the Arizona House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013.

Hobbs defeated Marco A. Lopez Jr. in the primary election to become the Democratic nominee for governor.

Hobbs oversaw a 2020 presidential election audit in Maricopa County demanded by Republican state senators and was a vocal opponent of the process. The audit kicked off in April 2021, even though county election officials had conducted two previous audits and found no evidence of widespread fraud or other issues.

During the audit, Hobbs received protection from the Arizona Department of Public Safety after fielding multiple death threats.

In an appearance on "CNN Tonight" with Don Lemon, Hobbs said, "I am absolutely not backing down. I am the one standing up for the election integrity in Arizona — and to protect the voters. There is not anything that's going to stop me from doing that."

The refusal to debate Lake was a significant liability for Hobbs, producing weeks of negative headlines and alarming some of her supporters.

According to U.S. News, her campaign released a statement saying that participating in a debate would "just create another spectacle" and that she would not "debate a conspiracy theorist."

"What I'm focused on is talking to the voters of Arizona," Hobbs told reporters during a campaign event in October. "I'm not interested in being a part of Kari Lake's spectacle or shouting match, and I'm going to talk directly to the voters."