The dust has long since settled on the actual voting, but if you spend five minutes on social media, you’ll realize the question of whether Kari Lake won in Arizona is still a massive powder keg. People are still arguing about it. Honestly, it's one of the most litigated and scrutinized elections in modern American history. But if we are looking at the certified results, the official canvas, and the stack of court rulings that followed the 2022 midterm, the answer is no. Lake did not win the governorship.
She lost to Katie Hobbs. The margin wasn't razor-thin by some standards, but it was close enough to keep the fires of doubt burning for her supporters. Hobbs brought in 1,287,891 votes. Lake garnered 1,270,774. That’s a gap of roughly 17,000 votes. In a state with millions of voters, that feels like a stone's throw, which is exactly why the aftermath became such a legal circus.
The Chaos in Maricopa County
You probably remember the images from Election Day. Long lines. Frustrated voters. Ballot printers that seemed to have a mind of their own. This is where the "Did Lake win in Arizona?" narrative really took root. In Maricopa County—which is basically where most of Arizona lives—about 70 of the 223 voting centers experienced issues with on-site ballot printers. The ink wasn't dark enough. The "timing marks" on the ballots weren't being read by the tabulators. It was a mess.
Lake’s legal team jumped on this. They argued that these technical glitches weren't just accidents. They claimed it was a deliberate attempt to suppress Republican voters who traditionally show up in massive numbers on Election Day. Think about it: if you're standing in line for three hours and the machine keeps spitting your ballot back out, you might just go home.
However, the courts didn't buy the "intentionality" argument. Maricopa County officials, including Recorder Stephen Richer and Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates (both Republicans, notably), explained that the printer issues were a technical failure, not a conspiracy. They pointed out that voters had options. They could "Box 3" their ballots—basically putting them in a secure slot to be counted later at a central facility. Thousands did exactly that.
Breaking Down the Court Rulings
Lake didn't just walk away. She filed lawsuit after lawsuit. We’re talking about a multi-year legal odyssey that went all the way up to the Arizona Supreme Court and back down again.
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Most of these challenges centered on three things:
- The printer malfunctions on Election Day.
- Chain-of-custody procedures for ballots.
- The signature verification process for mail-in envelopes.
In May 2023, a particularly high-profile trial took place. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson presided over it. Lake’s team brought in "experts" who claimed that signature verification was being done too quickly—sometimes in less than two seconds per ballot. They argued it was impossible to actually verify a signature that fast.
Judge Thompson's ruling was pretty blunt. He basically said that while the process might have been rushed or imperfect, there was "no clear and convincing evidence" of misconduct or that these issues changed the outcome of the election. To overturn an election, the legal bar is incredibly high. You can’t just show that things were messy. You have to prove that someone cheated and that the cheating actually flipped the result. Lake couldn't meet that burden in court.
The Persistent Misconceptions
Why does the question keep coming up? It’s partly because of how Arizona counts votes. It takes forever. Because Arizona allows mail-in ballots to be dropped off on Election Day, the "late-early" ballots (as they're called) take days to process. This creates a "red mirage" or "blue shift" depending on the year. In 2022, Lake was leading at certain points, and then as the mail-in ballots from Phoenix and Tucson were tallied, Hobbs surged ahead.
For a casual observer, that looks suspicious. For an election official, it’s just Tuesday.
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There’s also the issue of the 2020 hangover. Arizona was ground zero for the "Stop the Steal" movement after the Biden-Trump race. By the time Lake ran in 2022, the electorate was already primed to believe that any glitch was a sign of a rigged system. Lake leaned into this. She made election integrity the centerpiece of her campaign. When she lost, her base didn't see a defeat; they saw a crime scene.
Did Lake Win in Arizona Based on the Data?
If we look at the precinct-level data, the story is more about suburban shift than stolen ballots. Lake underperformed in key areas of Maricopa County where traditional "Country Club Republicans" live. These are voters who might have liked her policies but were turned off by her combative style or her constant focus on the 2020 election.
- Hobbs won over a significant chunk of Independent voters.
- Lake struggled with moderate women in the Phoenix suburbs.
- The Democratic "ground game" in Pima County (Tucson) was exceptionally strong.
So, while the printer issues were real and definitely shouldn't have happened, the data suggests Lake lost because she didn't get enough votes in the places she needed them most.
The Signature Verification Debate
This is the one that still gets people fired up. Lake’s legal team focused heavily on the idea that tens of thousands of signatures didn't match the ones on file. They used whistleblowers—temporary workers who claimed they were told to just "push through" ballots.
But here’s the nuance: signature verification is subjective. It’s not DNA testing. Arizona law gives a lot of discretion to the recorders. The courts eventually ruled that the procedures used by Maricopa County followed the state’s election manual. Even if some workers were fast, that didn't invalidate the entire election in the eyes of the law.
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Moving Forward: The 2024 and 2026 Context
Kari Lake didn't just disappear after 2022. She ran for the U.S. Senate in 2024 against Ruben Gallego. This is important because her 2022 loss shaped her entire 2024 strategy. She tried to soften her image a bit, but the "Did Lake win in Arizona?" question remained a litmus test for her most loyal supporters.
The reality of Arizona politics now is that the state is a true purple battleground. The margins are so thin that any logistical hiccup becomes a political weapon. State legislators have since tried to pass laws to speed up the count and tighten signature rules, but the political divide is so deep that consensus is hard to find.
Actionable Insights for Following Arizona Elections
If you're trying to make sense of Arizona's electoral landscape and the ongoing debates, stop looking at "vibe-based" reporting and look at the actual canvass reports.
- Check the Arizona Secretary of State’s website for the official "Canvas and Compilation." This is the only document that legally matters for who won or lost.
- Understand the "Late-Early" phenomenon. If a candidate is winning on election night but loses three days later, it’s usually because of the specific batch of mail-in ballots being processed, not a sudden influx of "fake" votes.
- Differentiate between "irregularities" and "fraud." A printer breaking is an irregularity. Someone hacking a machine to change 20,000 votes is fraud. So far, the Arizona courts have found several irregularities but zero evidence of outcome-determinative fraud in the Lake-Hobbs race.
- Monitor the Arizona Supreme Court dockets. While most of Lake's 2022 challenges are exhausted, the legal precedents set during her cases will govern how the 2026 elections are handled.
The "Did Lake win in Arizona" debate is essentially a Rorschach test for your trust in American institutions. If you trust the judicial system and the bipartisan boards of supervisors, the answer is a definitive no. If you believe the system is fundamentally broken, no amount of court rulings will likely change your mind. But in the eyes of the law, the certificates of election, and the history books, Katie Hobbs is the Governor, and Kari Lake is the challenger who fell short.