Fact check: Why there's no reason to question the votes in Arizona's US Senate race

Skeptics online found excuses to deny the results of the 2024 U.S. Senate race between former broadcaster Kari Lake and Rep. Ruben Gallego, in which the congressman formally accepted victory Nov. 11.

Chatter on social platforms X and Facebook questioned why Kari Lake lost when President-elect Donald Trump had won over Arizona voters.

Lake supporters — including Elon Musk, the X Corp. owner, and Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point Action chief operating officer — questioned the unofficial election results on social media.

Skeptics take to social media to falsely deny the Arizona election results

Social media posts focused on why Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, defeated Kari Lake, a Republican, despite 52% of Arizonans voting for Trump. The presidential race was called by the Associated Press on Nov. 9.

One post on Nov. 12 generated nearly 800,000 views on X. "This is so insane and nobody in the Republican party is talking about it and I don’t understand why," read the post, which shared an image of ballot results midday Tuesday.

Musk, X owner and supporter of the president elect, replied to the post. "Does seem odd," wrote Musk.

Gallego won Senate race by solid margin

Six days after Election Day, the Associated Press declared Gallego the Senate winner. He accepted victory the same night.

Lake posted a video Nov. 13 on her social media that seemed to acknowledge her loss to Gallego but did not explicitly concede to her opponent.

Gallego led Lake by more than 79,000 votes on Nov. 14, with 50.1% of the vote compared with Lake's 47.7%, according to the state's unofficial results.

Lake still had not conceded her 2022 run for Arizona governor after she lost to Katie Hobbs.

Skeptics have no proof to fuel their argument

Despite the chatter on social media, no major complications have arisen in tabulating the more than 3.3 million Arizona ballots, and no lawsuits have been filed to challenge election results.

Lake faced uphill battle for a Senate seat

Despite Kari Lake's name and face intertwined with President-elect Donald Trump, her loss in Arizona to a Democrat reflected a flawed campaign.

Lake couldn’t compete financially with Gallego and remained a polarizing figure throughout her campaign. As polls and politicians signaled more than a year ago, she never appealed to Democrats, had limited reach with independents and alienated a slice of Republicans.

Trump outperformed all five GOP Senate candidates in the competitive races in presidential battlegrounds. Unofficial results, however, show Lake did the worst of the Republican Senate contenders in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

As of Nov. 12, she had won 90.3% of the votes that Trump did.

Republic reporter Ronald J. Hansen contributed to this article.

Rey Covarrubias Jr. is a reporter at The Arizona Republic focusing on election misinformation. Reach him at [email protected]. The work is made possible through a grant from the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kari Lake supporters spread skepticism about Senate election results