PHOENIX — Former astronaut Mark Kelly continues to lead Sen. Martha McSally in their race for U.S. Senate, but the race is tightening.
Kelly raced out to an Election Night lead of 271,000 votes, as of Thursday night, that lead was down to just over 100,000.
The Kelly campaign remains confident that the results will run their way. The campaign declared victory in a statement after the Associated Press called the race Wednesday morning.
NBC has not called the race.
Sources close to the McSally campaign believe there is still a path, after recent returns have shown her gain ground.
But a Republican pollster says there may not be enough votes out there for her to catch up.
"The issue becomes: Are there enough for either the president or Martha McSally to catch up?" Paul Bentz, a Republican pollster, said.
Bentz said McSally faces long odds to win, especially as their margin is even wider than Trump and Biden's.
“What we are finding so far, is that the ballots that are left to count are continuing to trend Republican,” Bentz said.
In recent results released from Maricopa County, the president and senator have won somewhere around 55% to 59% of the votes.
However Mark Kelly and Vice President Joe Biden raced out to early leads, buoyed by strong Democratic turnout in the early ballots.
The lead though has started to shrink as Election Day votes and so called "late early" ballots have been counted.
“Those are the ones that came in on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, so those are definitely acting more like election day voters,” Bentz said.
The pollster said it will be very unlikely McSally can make up the difference.
Bentz estimates there are around 300,000 votes still to count. If that number is correct, McSally would need to win more than two-thirds of the remaining vote.
McSally may make the race closer, but she, and to an extent the president, are simply running out of votes.
“It’s like a basketball game sometimes the home team starts to catch up and catches on fire but then the clock runs out,” Bentz said.
Soon the game will change as the state will start counting the ballots dropped off on Election Day.
“That’s a whole mix bag because we don’t know who those people are,” Bentz said.
Those votes in the past have trended towards Democrats. It was these votes that helped Democrat Kyrsten Sinema overtake Martha McSally's election night lead in 2018.
Some in the party believe this trend will repeat, or at least cut down the margins that Republicans have been winning the most recent vote counts by. If that happens, it could lead to victory for both Joe Biden and Mark Kelly.
But Bentz said those ballots dropped off on Election Day may reflect election day voting numbers, which trended towards Republicans.
“We are and will be a battleground state for the next 10 to 15 years,” Bentz said.
Maricopa County still has an estimated 200,000 votes to count. The next release of results are expected Friday morning at 9 a.m.