Before the results from the not-so-early and provisional ballots started rolling in from the Maricopa County Recorder, we said it wouldn't take a miracle for Republican congressional candidate Vernon Parker to take back the lead from Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in CD-9.
However, as more ballots are being counted, it's not looking any prettier for Parker.
See also:
-Vernon Parker Wouldn't Need a Miracle to Defeat Kyrsten Sinema
-Arizona's Congressional Elections: Good, Bad, and Ugly
-Kyrsten Sinema, Vernon Parker and Why Top-Two Was and Is a Dumb Idea
-Can Kyrsten Sinema Win in Congressional District 9?
Yesterday morning, the county elections department showed Sinema had a 2,715-vote lead over Parker. After counting an additional 12,680 votes, Sinema's lead sits at 3,842 votes at the time of this post.
County Recorder Helen Purcell gave an update yesterday, indicating that there are plenty of early ballots -- which were dropped off at the polls or received by the county close to election day -- and provisional ballots remaining to be tabulated.
As for those provisional and early ballots counted so far, Sinema scored a little more than 50 percent of them, while Parker took about 42 percent. The rest were tabulated for Libertarian Power Gammill, and just a few were write-in votes.
We guesstimated yesterday that Parker would need about 49 percent of all the remaining votes to win, to Sinema's 45 percent. With these new results, we guesstimate that Parker now needs 50 percent of what's left, to Sinema's 44 percent.
There are still a lot of votes left, though. According to our assumption (math here), only around 14 or 15 percent of our estimate of remaining votes have been included in this total. However, it may not be a surprise that the late votes are coming in for Sinema, in a district that leans slightly Democratic, and she's doing better with these votes than a pair of other Dems -- U.S. Senate candidate Richard Carmona and Maricopa County Sheriff candidate Paul Penzone.
