It was a bad election day, all things considered, for the Republican Party on Tuesday as the red wave diminished to a trickle. Tough decisions lie ahead, but perhaps there’s some glimmer of hope on the horizon.

New numbers coming out of Arizona are not only showing the races there tightening but GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is likely favored to win over Democrat Katie Hobbs. Blake Masters, who is running for senate, also now has a clear, though, more difficult path to beat Democrat Mark Kelly.

MARICOPA BALLOTS REMAINING UPDATE: ~400k total ballots remaining. 275k were dropped off on Election Day. 125k were mailed back from Saturday to Tuesday.

Election Day drop off batch likely strongly favor Republicans & the ballots that were mailed back will lean Republican.

— Data Orbital (@Data_Orbital) November 9, 2022

Outstanding non-provisional ballots in AZ confirmed by counties. Vast majority are election day early vote drop offs. (Typically numbers divisible by 10 are still estimates by them).

Graham: 3,450
La Paz: 992
Maricopa: 428,000
Pinal: 24,863
Yuma: 8,200

State: 465,505

— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 9, 2022

With the remaining ballots outstanding, we are confident we will win.

— Blake Masters for U.S. Senate Press (@MastersPress) November 9, 2022

You may remember the primary race that took place in Arizona some months ago. Kari Lake was actually down double digits late into the night. It wasn’t until the days after election day that she overtook her GOP rival to become the gubernatorial candidate. That’s because Arizona typically counts election day votes last and Lake’s voters were the type who voted on election day. That dynamic is continuing in the general election, and as it stands, it does appear there are enough ballots outstanding for Lake to come out victorious assuming there’s not a surprise drop of mail-in ballots that aren’t being considered in the equation.

Masters has a tougher road. He’s currently almost five points behind Democrat Mark Kelly. That means he’s got a lot more ground to make up compared to Lake’s just 12,000 vote deficit. Still, there is a path for the GOP senate candidate, and it’s not really that far-fetched. Rough math would say he needs to win somewhere between 58-60 percent of the remaining vote, and those are the kinds of splits he got in the last drops. Things could change, but it’s going to be really close either way.

Looking at the GOP’s performance overall in this election, it’s not good. Yet, if Adam Laxalt wins the senate seat in Nevada (highly likely at this point) and Masters somehow pulls out a victory, Republicans could take the US Senate without even having to win the runoff in Georgia, which would then become a fight over a possible 52nd seat. That wouldn’t change the fact that big changes are needed in the party, but it would lessen the sting that so many of us have felt up to this point.

As to Lake, she’s so much fun to watch, and I don’t think I’m alone in wanting to see her actually get to govern. If she wins, it’ll be a big victory for the party and a bigger victory for Arizona.

Maricopa County tends to make its ballot drops in the evenings. Keep your eye out tonight for one that could push Lake into the lead and Masters a lot closer.