In race pitting a Republican woman who in 1991 became the first female military pilot to fly in combat, according to Aviation Week , against a Democratic woman who was once homeless, per The Washington Post , and if elected would be the first openly bisexual Senator in United States history, 42-year-old Kyrsten Sinema now appears poised to turn an Arizona Senate seat blue for the first time since 1994.
The latest poll in Sinema’s race against former Air Force fighter pilot Martha McSally, 52, conducted by The Trafalgar Group , shows Sinema with a three-percentage-point lead, with 50 percent to McSally’s 47.
In 23 polls by various research firms taken since October 12 in Arizona, Sinema has led in 16 of them, while McSally has shown a lead in just six, with one poll, and October 29 Fox News survey, showing an even race, according to a compilation by FiveThirtyEight.com .
The race remains close, however. In a statistical projection by FiveThirtyEight.com , Sinema is predicted to win 49.7 percent of Tuesday’s vote in Arizona, to 48.3 percent for McSally, meaning that the race could ultimately be determined by how many voters turn out at the ballot box.
About two-thirds of Arizona voters are expected to cast early voting ballots, and while registered Republicans led by 12 points in the first two weeks of early voting, according to the Washington Examiner , Democrats had cut that lead to eight points by Saturday.
Since Arizona in 1912 became the last of the 48 contiguous states to join the union, as the Arizona Republic recounts, 11 Senators have represented the state. All of them have been non-Hispanic white men, and only five have been Democrats.
But no Democrat has served as a senator from Arizona since three-term senator Dennis DeConcini retired in 1994, meaning that the state has not voted to send a Democrat to the senate since 1988, according to BallotPedia . Sinema and McSally are battling to win the seat being vacated by Republican Jeff Flake, who is stepping aside after just one term in the Senate.
According to the FiveThirtyEight projections, Sinema now has a 59.1 percent chance of winning the seat left open by Flake’s retirement, a three-out-of-five chance. McSally’s chances of victory now stand at 40.9 percent, or two-out-of-five.
A wild card in the race could be Green Party candidate Angela Green, who proceeded to take about two percent of the vote according to FiveThirtyEight . But Green last Thursday, five days before the 2018 midterm election, pulled out of the race and threw her support behind Sinema, as Fox News reported.
