Trump's ahead in AZ, so why is 'Trump in heels' Kari Lake still trailing Ruben Gallego?

No winner has emerged yet in Arizona's U.S. Senate race, but even if she wins, Republican Kari Lake lagged far behind President-elect Donald Trump after casting herself as "Trump in heels."

As of Thursday afternoon, Lake trailed Democrat Ruben Gallego by about 50,000 votes. Hundreds of thousands of ballots still must be counted in Arizona.

At least for the moment, Lake is in the running for drawing the least GOP support in the five presidential swing states that also had a competitive Senate contest.

The biggest question Republicans faced heading into the Arizona Senate race with Lake still hangs over the contest now as the votes are being counted. She is widely popular with GOP primary voters, but has shown relatively limited appeal to the broader electorate.

"The Trump brand is not automatically transferrable to candidates who claimed the MAGA mantle. We saw that in 2022 with Senate candidates that lost very winnable races," said Jessica Taylor, Senate editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

"That was true in Arizona, and I think that was true in Arizona again. Kari Lake came into this race with very high negatives after the 2022 gubernatorial race and after refusing to concede that race," she said.

The Lake and Gallego campaigns offered no comment Thursday.

There were five presidential swing states this year that also had competitive Senate contests. Of those, only Nevada Republican Sam Brown is rivaling Lake for drawing a smaller share of Trump votes, though Nevada has a unique voting option.

As of Thursday afternoon, Brown trailed Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., by about 13,000 votes with more than 90% of ballots counted in that state.

Brown and Lake each had 91% of the vote total that Trump has collected in their respective states, though Brown was fractionally lower.

In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Republican Senate candidates had 96% of Trump's vote total.

That wasn't enough to avoid Senate losses for the GOP in Michigan and Wisconsin, but Pennsylvania's Dave McCormick defeated Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa.

Republican Senate candidates in non-swing states also lagged Trump, sometimes by significant margins. Royce White in Minnesota, for example, pulled in only about 85% of the votes Trump received in his loss there. Bernie Moreno won Ohio's Senate race while only garnering 90% of Trump's total.

Lake's relatively weak standing with Trump voters in a swing state is notable because her political identity revolves chiefly around her support for Trump. No Senate Republican challenger in the swing states had a higher national profile than Lake.

Lake's campaign bus, which crisscrossed the state, is covered with large photos showing her alongside Trump. She had his support during her 2022 gubernatorial loss and again on the day she launched her Senate campaign in October 2023.

According to Google's search trends, Lake commanded more traffic over the past year than the other four GOP Senate contenders combined. Her following on the social media platform X is nine times larger than the other four candidates combined.

Lake was a prominent Trump surrogate on conservative cable news channels.

Even so, barring a sudden drop in Trump's support at the same time her own voting fortunes go up, Lake did not inherit Trump's elective popularity in Arizona.

She trailed in nearly all polling since Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., dropped out of the race in March and could never keep pace with Gallego's fundraising.

Unlike Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's allies, who poured tens of millions into the race to help Gallego, Lake received no support from allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Even without the help, Lake closed ground in the polls in the final weeks, but rarely led, even after a strong debate performance against Gallego in early October.

It's worth noting that Brown's lack of support from those who voted for Trump in Nevada comes with a caveat.

Nearly 3% of Nevada voters chose third party candidates in the Senate race, not very different from the 2% that Green Party candidate Eduardo Quintana has received in Arizona.

But Nevada has a unique option for voters that includes "none of these candidates."

With nearly all ballots counted there, that choice has also received nearly 3% of the Senate vote. Taylor said that option could end up tipping the race.

Lake's relatively weak pull with Trump voters in Arizona stands out compared to his two prior presidential runs.

In 2016, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., won his final term in office on the same night that Trump carried Arizona.

With their feud already evident, McCain pulled in 9% more votes than Trump did. In particular, McCain found more support than Trump in Maricopa and Pima counties, the state's population centers.

In 2020, Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., who was appointed to the seat after McCain's 2018 death and her Senate loss months later, ran as a Trump supporter. She received 99% of his vote total, even though Trump and McSally both lost in the state.

Lake was clearly the most pro-Trump Senate candidate of the three and could fare the worst in winning the votes of his supporters.

It was a scenario that some Republicans feared long ago.

In March 2023, Jeff DeWit, then the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, met Lake at her home with a message.

DeWit told her there were "very powerful people who want to keep you out" of the Senate race, according to a recording of their conversation leaked to British media 10 months later.

"So, the ask I got today from back east was: 'Is there any companies out there or something that could just put her on the payroll to keep her out?'" DeWit asked Lake.

She responded: "This is about defeating Trump and I think that's a bad, bad thing for our country."

In meetings before Lake entered the Senate race, the National Republican Senatorial Committee urged Lake to drop election denialism as a topic in favor of more politically unifying subjects, such as inflation and border security.

She largely did avoid the topic at campaign events, but the subject often came up in questions from reporters who noted Lake continued to press in court to overturn her gubernatorial election.