Kelly defeated Blake in the Arizona senate race by 5% of the votes. Mark Kelly, a Democratic incumbent Senator, received 51.78%, whereas Blake Masters, a Republican candidate, received 46.1% of the votes.
Mark Kelly was declared winner late Friday evening after a prolonged vote count in which Blake Master fell behind Mark Kelly continuously.
The battle to represent Arizona in the Senate was a deeply watched race, as it was largely seen as a key battleground in regulating control of the Senate. Kelly was one of the best-sponsored candidates in the 2022 election. He accumulated more than $70 million throughout the campaign. At the same time, Blake Masters’ campaign was generally hindered by being low-paid relative to Kelly’s machine.
Kelly led for most of his race for re-election in spite of remarkable discernible headwinds for the Democrats. In the year 2022, Democrats faced low approval ratings in many key election matters, such as inflation, crime, and immigration across the country. They were also overloaded with an unpopular Democratic president in the White House.
Kelly tried hard to dampen Republican criticism of him on those matters by running somewhat as a free individualist. He also hailed studies that put him on the list of one of the most bipartisan legislators in the Senate. Kelly also maintained a distance from the current president Joe Biden, never requesting him to come to Arizona to campaign with him and demurrer him.
Polls had started getting stiff between Kelly and Masters in the closing weeks of the election race. Marc Victor, the Libertarian nominee in the race, declared that he was taking his step back and supported Masters one week before the election was to be held.
As Victor never polled high, Masters applauded the endorsement as a “major boost” in the close race against Mark Kelly.
While Masters pursued Kelly for most of the election race, he locked the gap in October. Election forecasters for platforms such as Politico and Cook Political Report shifted the Arizona Senate race from a Democratic inclination to a toss-up in the result.
Blake Masters won a competitive primary race because former president Donald Trump endorsed him and mogul Peter Thiel financially supported him. Blake Masters was running third in the GOP primary behind General Mark Brnovich, Arizona Attorney General, and businessman Jim Lamon till Trump supported Masters in early June. Masters then ascended to the top spot until winning the primary election in August.
Kelly defeated Blake and also got into a debate with each other during the campaign. Masters criticized Kelly for his record voting with Joe Biden throughout the October 6 event in which Victor also participated. Kelly distanced himself from the president and asserted that he had accumulated “$1 billion more” in financing for the U.S. Border Patrol.
Also read: Trump boycott of Ron DeSantis starts Presidential Primary 2024?
