Arizona voters headed to the polls Tuesday to choose nominees in four key primary elections: Senate, governor, and two House races. The most closely watched race was the Republican primary for the Senate seat vacated by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake between Rep. Martha McSally, Kelli Ward, and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. On Tuesday night, McSally prevailed with relative ease, setting up a November showdown with Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. There’s also a competitive Democratic primary for governor to see who will challenge Republican incumbent Doug Ducey and two House races — including one where Democrats Ann Kirkpatrick and Matt Heinz are fighting bitterly. Results won’t began reporting at 11 pm Eastern due to some areas of the state that follow Daylight Savings Time. Live results are below, powered by Decision Desk.<doc-sep>Tuesday's Republican Senate primary in Arizona will likely boil down to one contentious issue: immigration. Over a third of Republicans say that immigration is the top problem in America, according to a recent Gallup poll, and 22 percent of all Americans agree. President Donald Trump and other Republicans have made border security their priority issue on the Midterm campaign trail, most recently seizing on the death of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old college student allegedly murdered by an undocumented Mexican immigrant, as proof that a hardline immigration approach is necessary. But in Arizona, a border state that's shifting from red to purple, the debate between moderately conservative GOP Senate frontrunner Martha McSally and her far-Right, Trumpian competitors, Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio, has become a case study for the rest of the country. Ward has said she believe a budget should be passed in Congress without full funding for a border wall and supported the separation of parents and children at the Southern U.S. border. Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio was pardoned by Trump last year after being convicted of criminal contempt of court for refusing to stop racially profiling and detaining people he believed to be undocumented immigrants. McSally meanwhile, has shifted her once-moderate position on immigration further to the right in order to compete with her dogged opponents. McSally went from supporting a GOP compromise immigration bill to backing the Securing America's Future Act which would end the diversity visa program and increase border enforcement. "It's no shock that McSally has been changing positions on key policy issues since she decided to run for higher office," said Chad Willems, Arpaio's campaign manager in a statement. "But for her to flip-flop so late in the game is just embarrassing." Still, McSally supporter and former Arizona governor Jan Brewer is in favor of the changes. "I think that she's evolved and she understands that this is a huge, huge issue," said the governor who signed a bill into law allowing police to question anyone they thought could be undocumented. Democratic challenger Representative Kyrsten Sinema, once a Green Party advocate, has also moved to the right on immigration. The candidate says that Immigration and Customs Enforcement performs an important and essential function, and supported bills in the House that would increase penalties for immigrants with multiple deportations and give federal authorities the ability to deport noncitizens who live in gang areas. "What I'm really proud of is my ability and willingness to learn and grow as a political leader," she told The Associated Press. "That's allowed me to learn new opinions and change as I've gotten new information."<doc-sep>Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images The race for retiring Arizona Republican Jeff Flake's U.S. Senate seat is a muddled battleground this year, and that could be good news for Democrats. While the GOP candidates are embroiled in an intraparty battle ahead of Tuesday's primary, the anticipated Democratic nominee, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, is pouring millions of dollars into ads targeting independent voters who are key to flipping the seat. In an all-out fight for the GOP nod, two conservative firebrands are splitting up the Arizona party's base. It has given establishment pick Rep. Martha McSally a consistent polling advantage. Seen as a pragmatic legislator who could pick up moderate voters, McSally is expected to beat Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an immigration hardliner whom President Donald Trump pardoned over a criminal contempt conviction. Flake bowed out of his re-election bid after facing a revolt from the Arizona Republican base over his public criticism of the president. Unlike Flake, the three GOP candidates in Tuesday's primary have backed Trump. But the Republican candidates have failed to engage with the independent and moderate voters who will likely determine the election outcome, GOP strategists said. Sinema has a commanding lead over civil rights attorney Deedra Abboud in polls ahead of the Democratic primary. Sinema has been bidding for the general election this whole time, while the Republicans have been battling amongst themselves in the primary. Chuck Coughlin Republican strategist "Sinema has been bidding for the general election this whole time, while the Republicans have been battling amongst themselves in the primary," said Chuck Coughlin, a Phoenix-based Republican strategist. "This will be a problem for whoever the Republican nominee is." He said he expects McSally, who is favored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to win the primary. National Republicans, concerned about Sinema's chances of winning the seat, are hoping to lock down McSally's bid with a Trump endorsement. But the president has been noncommittal to requests from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Whoever captures the Republican nomination will have a small window of time to gain votes and catch up with the Democratic frontrunner before the November general election. Dr. Ward vs Sheriff Joe Ward and Arpaio have split the hardcore conservative base, leaving neither of them much of a chance to win Tuesday. Ward, an osteopathic doctor who lost to incumbent Sen. John McCain in a 2016 Senate bid, has not held back in her bid to capture far-right voters. She embarked on a tour a week before the primary with extreme right-wing personality Mike Cernovich. He is best known for promoting the debunked "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory, which alleges that top Democrats led a pedophilia ring. Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt when a judge found that he had ignored a court order to end racial profiling, is trailing far behind in fundraising and polling. His campaign serves few purposes other than to boost his face value, raise money and siphon conservative votes from Ward, GOP strategists said. "Arpaio wrecked Kelli Ward's race," said Mike Noble, chief pollster at OH Predictive Insights, a Phoenix-based research polling company. "He has no campaign strategy and he's firing in all directions. We have a better chance of finding a photo of Sheriff Joe wearing pink underwear than to see him as a senator in Arizona." Trump praises all, but endorses none The president's elusive endorsement has also complicated the GOP primary, strategist Coughlin said. Days before the election, all three Republicans are vying to cast themselves as Trump's preferred candidate. While none of them has secured the president's support, they are all acting like they have. McSally's campaign has disseminated newsletters touting the president's recent praise of her at a bill signing. Ward mailed a photo of herself with Trump along with a portion of a 2017 Trump tweet praising her decision to run. Arpaio has long boasted his loyalty to Trump, telling Republicans in Oro Valley earlier this year that if the president's approval rating plummeted to 1 percent, he'd still back Trump. But strategists say it's unlikely Trump will endorse any candidate before Tuesday. Sheriff Joe Arpaio (L) of Maricopa County, Arizona listens as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the press prior to a rally on January 26, 2016 in Marshalltown, Iowa. Getty Images<doc-sep>
Right now, the major national story involving Arizona is the death of John McCain. Nothing about Tuesday’s Senate primaries is likely to change that. When Arizonans go to the polls to choose party nominees to fill Jeff Flake’s seat, the overwhelming likelihood is that they will choose Democrat Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Martha McSally. Sinema, a congresswoman from Arizona’s ninth congressional district, has been a lock for the nomination since she announced her candidacy. McSally has not. Before McSally entered the race in January, observers thought she would be in for a dogfight with populist Kelli Ward. Back in the halcyon days of the Steve Bannon project to remake the GOP in his image, Ward, an osteopath who had mounted a 2016 primary challenge to McCain from the right, seemed like a serious contender for the nomination. On the back of her full-throated support for all things Trump, Ward secured an endorsement from Bannon, and gained positive coverage from Breitbart, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. But things changed. Bannon’s project lost its momentum, Breitbart its relevance. McSally, who had criticized Trump in the 2016 election, developed a relationship with the White House and moved to the right on immigration. And perhaps most consequentially, Joe Arpaio entered the race. Like Ward, he ran as a bomb-throwing Trump sycophant; as expected, the former Maricopa County sheriff sapped her support. In recent weeks a flailing Ward has tried to drum up publicity for her campaign with a statewide bus tour featuring Iowa congressman Steve King, nootropic salesman Mike Cernovich, and Fox News provocateur Tomi Lahren. But recent polls give McSally a commanding lead: She led Ward and Arpaio 48–22–18 in a recent Data Orbital survey, and an ABC-15 poll put her up 20 points on the second-place Ward. Trump has stayed out of the race, dashing any chance of a last-second Ward or Arpaio surge. In recent days McSally’s campaign has shifted its focus away from her primary opponents and toward Sinema. Last week her campaign released an ad in which McSally touts her military record (she was the first woman to fly a fighter jet in combat and served from 1988 to 2010) and mocks an image of Sinema (a former Green turned Blue Dog Democrat) protesting the Iraq war clad in a pink tutu. Ads aside, though, Sinema is no slouch. Connected Republicans foresee a competitive race. The old conventional wisdom in Arizona statewide elections was that if the GOP candidate kept things close in liberal Pima County, which contains the city of Tuscon, she could count on support from conservative Maricopa County, which contains Phoenix and its sprawl, to deliver victory. But that might be changing as the share of Hispanic voters grows and as white suburban Arizonans drift to the left. Trump’s margin of victory in 2016 was surprisingly narrow, and both he and governor Doug Ducey have lackluster favorability ratings in the state. A recent special election in the state’s eighth congressional district — which comprises conservative Phoenix suburbs and voted overwhelmingly for Trump — was tighter than expected. McSally enjoys decent numbers in Tuscon, and is a solid candidate. But the general election, unlike the primaries, should be close.