One of the oddities of the midterm elections in Arizona was Republican turnout was up and Democratic turnout down from 2018 in Maricopa County, yet some of the top-of-the-ticket GOP candidates lost their races.
The county, encompassing the Phoenix metropolitan area, includes 60 percent of registered voters in the state.
Republicans outnumber Democrats in Arizona overall by more than 166,000 people.
Maricopa County had a 64.2 percent voter participation rate in the midterms, which was about 8 percent above the average 56.3 percent going back to the 1970s, according to the county’s Election Day director, Scott Jarrett, who provided an election summary at the county Board of Supervisors meeting Monday.
However, that was not quite as high as the 2018 midterm participation rate of 64.5 percent.
In this month’s election, 75.4 percent of Republicans turned out and voted, according to Jarrett. In 2018, the GOP turnout was more than 1 percentage point lower at 74.2 percent.
Meanwhile, Democrats saw a lighter turnout this year than in 2018: 68.5 percent versus 69.9 percent.
Despite Democratic turnout being down from 2018, the party’s gubernatorial candidate and Arizona’s secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, won her race against Republican Kari Lake.