What can Maricopa results tell us?
Taking a deeper look at the primary election
Maricopa County was Trump country when it came to the Republican primary election, with the winning candidates for the top-tier races all riding the former president’s endorsement to victory.
An analysis of the county’s Aug. 2 primary results, however, highlighted some spots where the MAGA muscle wasn’t all powerful. In the GOP primary for governor, Karrin Taylor Robson blunted Kari Lake’s dominance in key areas that could be a challenge for Lake in the November election.
That was not the case in the U.S. Senate and secretary of state primaries in Maricopa County, where the MAGA candidates had double-digit leads over their next-closest competitor.
In the governor’s race, Lake claimed the county by 2.75 percentage points, but Taylor Robson prevailed in areas that could be swing-voter territory in the November general election.
On the Democratic side, secretary of state was the only race with a potentially competitive primary. In that matchup, which Adrian Fontes won by nearly 9 percentage points, geographic factors might have been at play. Fontes and state Rep. Reginald Bolding each posted strong showings in areas they have been associated with through elective offices they have held.
A data analysis also found some anomalies from the primary.
There were several ties in the toptier races, with the Democratic secretary of state race producing the most at nine. The Moya precinct, just south of Interstate 10 and west of Interstate 17, produced two different ties: four votes each for U.S. Senate candidates Blake Masters, Jim Lamon and Mark Brnovich. The remaining voters knotted up at three votes each for Justin Olson and Mick McGuire.
Matt Salmon, a GOP candidate for governor, who dropped out of the race but after ballots were printed, won one precinct. He captured the tiny San Lucy precinct near Gila Bend, winning the vote of the sole voter who cast a ballot.
Lake won, but Taylor Robson captured swing areas
In the governor’s race, Taylor Robson won in the retirement communities and in the areas adjacent to the Loop 101 corridor running from north Phoenix, south alongside Scottsdale and extending to Chandler, home to many of Arizona’s high-tech businesses.
“It is the swing section of the state,” said Paul Bentz, senior vice president for research and strategy with the public affairs firm High Ground.
The corridor is filled with businessfriendly, education-friendly Republicans who were dominant in past elections, willing to split their tickets, such as in 2018, when voters chose Republican Doug Ducey but also Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, Bentz said.
These are steady voters, certain to show up for every election. Taylor Robson also benefited from some competitive races down ballot in these areas, Bentz said, including for Legislature and Maricopa County supervisor. That meant more campaigns talking to voters and raising the profile of the Aug. 2 primary.
The retirement communities in the northwest Valley also were Taylor Robson strongholds in the face of the Lake wave.
Bentz said his polling showed Taylor Robson had an advantage with voters age 65 and older. A July survey found Taylor Robson with an 11-point edge over Lake, highlighting a highturnout population to target.
And Taylor Robson did so, said consultant Lorna Romero, with a blizzard of TV ads that aired adjacent to earlyevening network shows such as “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!”
Data showed that in some precincts clustered along Grand Avenue between the Loop 101 and the Loop 303, Taylor Robson won by double digits as high as 28%.
Coupled with Taylor Robson’s strong showing in areas along the Loop 101 corridor, the retirement communities provide a map of areas where GOP nominee Lake might want to focus in the general election, said Romero Ferguson, owner of Elevate Strategies, a public affairs firm.
“For Kari Lake, that goes to show a group of voters she needs to shore up,” she said.
Lake might take a cue from, literally, her own backyard: She and Taylor Robson live in the same precinct in the Biltmore area in east Phoenix. Those voters chose Taylor Robson by 23 points.
TV ads in retirement areas
The race for the U.S. Senate nomination was nowhere near as close as that for governor, with Blake Masters finishing with a 13-point advantage over Jim Lamon in a five-person field.
But data from the county’s primary results showed a similar dynamic when it came to the northwest Valley retirement communities. Lamon won those areas, albeit with smaller margins than the governor primary produced.
“The reason he did great in the Sun Cities and those areas is he spent significantly more on TV than Blake,” said Mike Noble, of OH Predictive Insights in Phoenix, a market research firm whose work extends to political polls. Those ads reached a voting bloc that, being retired, arguably had more time to absorb the TV messages than households juggling school schedules and work obligations.
The commercials, however, didn’t pay off in the Loop 101 corridor, where Taylor Robson performed well. Lamon also made a strong showing in some geographically large precincts in the far northeast Valley.
To Noble, the GOP races were easy to sum up. “Trump dominated,” he said. The former president does well with most Republican voting blocs, save for the very affluent, Noble added.
That might suggest some vulnerability for the Republican nominees in the general election, although Noble and other political observers cautioned, the November election is an entirely different game, playing to a statewide audience rather than just GOP voters.
The precincts where the GOP nominees did not come out on top provide an opportunity for Democrats, Noble said.
“Kyrsten Sinema wrote the playbook,” Noble said, pointing to her 2018
U.S. Senate win that hinged on winning swing voters, including Republicans.
“They’ll take advantage of this current civil war being waged in the Republican Party,” he said of Democrats.
‘Crushing the field’ in secretary of state race
The four-way Republican race for secretary of state was a blowout for Mark Finchem, who led his closest opponent by 15 percentage points in Maricopa County.
That created the rather odd pairing of Finchem performing well in the areas where Taylor Robson bested Lake. But analysts said that is a coincidence and not indicative of any kind of synergy between Taylor Robson and Finchem voters.
“The fact that Karrin Taylor Robson did well where Finchem did well may not mean anything,” consultant Constantin Querard said. “Finchem kind of crushed the field.”
Romero Ferguson said Finchem benefited from better name ID, given media reports about his unstinting support for the “Stop the Steal” movement and his Trump endorsement.
As she noted drily, there’s not much in common between Finchem and Taylor Robson.
Democrats compete for elections post
The only competitive primary on the Democratic side was in the race for secretary of state.
Consultant Chad Campbell said the results show both Fontes and Bolding got some benefit from geographic areas where they were best known.
Bolding made a strong showing in southwestern Phoenix and parts of the west Valley. That likely stems from the eight years he served as a state lawmaker representing those areas, most recently as the Democratic leader.
But Fontes likely got a bump from his tenure as Maricopa County recorder.
“Fontes had the advantage of being in office for four years,” said Campbell, a former Democratic state lawmaker.
Fontes left the office in January 2021 after losing his reelection bid. But he also gained a lot of attention for his conduct of the 2020 presidential election, which has withstood numerous audits and scrutiny as a well-run process.
Voting data shows Fontes fared well throughout most of Phoenix, with strong support in the northeast and southeast parts of the county. He also picked up support in the less-populated rural areas in the county’s far southwestern regions.
The results also showed the two candidates dueled to a tie in nine precincts, although there was no discernable pattern as they were scattered throughout the county.