Ariz. Democrat's Lead Is Now 'Insurmountable'

With more than 210,000 votes still to be counted in Arizona's Senate race, anything could still happen—but it's not looking promising for Republican candidate Martha McSally. According to an update released Sunday evening, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is now 32,640 votes ahead of McSally, with 49.1% of the vote to McSally's 48.1%, Politico reports. With the latest count, "Kyrsten’s lead is insurmountable," said Sinema campaign manager Andrew Plett. "McSally’s campaign said today’s results would be her ‘firewall’ but, as we expected, no firewall emerged."

Most of the uncounted votes are in Maricopa County, where Sinema is leading by a significant margin. "McSally would have to win the remainder of Maricopa County ballots by 22% to take the lead in this race," Plett said. "This is not plausible. Kyrsten will be declared the next US Senator from Arizona." National GOP officials have claimed Democrats in Maricopa County are "cooking the books," but outgoing Republican Sen. Jeff Flake distanced himself from the allegations Sunday, the Arizona Republic reports. "There is no evidence of election officials 'cooking the books' in Arizona," he tweeted. "Such careless language undermines confidence in our democratic institutions." (In Florida, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has "un-conceded.")