UPDATED VOTE COUNT WATCH, ARIZONA: BULLETIN: Pima County has inputted more votes, bringing McSally's lead to 179 and within the automatic recount threshold. (Mon. 5:42pm)

Arizona's Politics will be keeping an eye on results for some of the tight races as the provisionals and early ballots are processed.

Congressional District 2 is as tight as it gets right now, between incumbent Rep. Ron Barber (D-CD2) and GOP challenger Martha McSally. The other races that we are currently tracking on our county-by-county chart are #AZ01 between incumbent Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-CD1) and Andy Tobin, the Superintendent of Public Instruction race between Diane Douglas and David Garcia, and Prop. 122 regarding state sovereignty.

Mon. 6:02pm:  Pima County counted approximately 4,628 more votes today - provisional ballots that were approved for counting. Of those, approximately 70% were from voters inside Congressional District 2.  Rep. Ron Barber received approximately 52% of those 3,219 - or, 1,686 - and Martha McSally tallied 1,524. Today's percentages are in keeping with the 51.68% Barber has received in Pima County, and the 47.88% received by McSally.

This brings the count within the threshold (2,000) for an automatic recount. Pima County still has several thousand provisional ballots still to process.  McSally's legal team's attempt to immediately segregate and eventually exclude the provisional ballots from several precincts was initially unsuccessful today in Superior Court.

Mon. 5:40pm: BULLETIN: Pima County has inputted more votes, bringing McSally's lead to 179 and within the automatic recount threshold.

Sun. 5:23pm: Martha McSally's lead over Rep. Ron Barber dwindled Sunday afternoon to 341 votes. Although Pima County officials told reporters on Saturday that there would be no updated vote totals until Monday, they released new numbers at 4pm, Sunday.  The count is now 106,705 to 106,364. 0.16% separates the two, 49.85% to 49.56%.

Pima County counted 3,355 ballots. Only 2,024 were in CD2 (Pima County is divided among CD1, CD2, and CD3), which is in keeping with the approximately 2/3 from earlier counts.  Barber tallied 1,186 to McSally's 1,018.  That is also in keeping with Barber's previous totals in Pima County.

According to Pima County officials yesterday, about 13,000 ballots remained to be processed.  That would leave less than 10,000, and if 2/3 of those are CD2, the remaining approximately 6,500 ballots would be more than enough for the incumbent to catch up or pass McSally. (Some amount of those provisional and conditional provisional ballots will not be counted for a variety of reasons.)

As reported earlier by Tucson Weekly and Tucson Sentinel, the McSally camp may be filing a challenge to halt the counting of some portion of the provisionals.

Fri. 7:00pm: Martha McSally stretched her lead to 509 votes this evening, as both Cochise and Pima counties processed late earlies and provisional ballots.  The gap between the GOP challenger and Rep. Ron Barber had been 363 last night.  Pima County added about 16,000 votes today, of which 10,000 were from parts of #AZ02. (Pima County has parts of three different Congressional districts.)


Thurs. 8:29pm: Races tighten tonight as Maricopa, Pima, Apache and Mohave counties report their counts from the day's verified earlies and provisionals.  GOP challenger Martha McSally's lead over Rep. Ron Barber dwindled from 1,293 to only 363.

Besides the #AZ02 race, the other key races we're watching also got tighter with tonight's new numbers.  In the Superintendent of Public Instruction contest, the GOP's Diane Douglas has a 20,626-vote lead over Dem David Garcia. Maricopa County is largely responsible for the dwindling lead; even though Douglas has a few votes more than Garcia in the most-populous county, today's votes favored the Dem.

Andy Tobin continues to inch closer in #AZ01, although he is unlikely to catch up. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick's lead is now 8,530 (out of 155k total votes).

And, Proposition 122 (state sovereignty) has tightened, too. 51.2% of the votes counted are now in favor of the constitutional amendment.

Thurs. 5:03pm: Navajo County inputted approximately 1,650 votes a few minutes ago.  The county's overall vote has favored Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in #AZ01, but today's late earlies and provisionals broke more than 2:1 for challenger Andy Tobin. The Republican picked up 1,138, compared to Kirkpatrick's 510.  That means her lead slipped to 8,741. (Still a comfortable 52.66%-46.93%.)

Thurs. 4:36pm: Mohave County added 1,807 votes within the past hour. It is the first time since Election Night that Mohave updated. Only three of the votes were in #AZ01, and all three were picked up by Andy Tobin. The percentages for the statewide races only changed by .02%.

Thurs. 12:36pm: Yavapai County just added 572 votes to their tally, which had not been updated since Election Night.  Andy Tobin gained 96 votes on Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, but still trails by 9,373.

Thurs. 9:16am: The Arizona Secretary of State's office updated its election results page at 9:08 this morning.  Unfortunately, after comparing the new page to our table (above), it appears that no new votes have been added to the totals.  Must've been checking - like I did a few minutes earlier - to see if any counties had left them late night updates.

Thurs. 8:50am: Eight of Arizona's 15 counties have not updated their vote totals since Election Night. With several Congressional, statewide, and legislative races - not to mention local ones - all of the thousands of outstanding ballots are critical.  No doubt, elections staff in these eight counties were working on Wednesday, but it is odd that they would not take the time to report the late earlies and the provisionals that they have verified and counted.

These are the eight counties: Coconino, Gila, Greenlee, La Paz, Mohave, Pinal, Yavapai and Yuma.

Wed. 7:30pm: Apache County - overwhelmingly Democratic - added another 1,500 votes to the totals tonight, and they broke in favor of Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick 1,042-438.  Her lead over GOP challenger Andy Tobin is now 9,369.

Wed. 5:40pm: Rep. Ron Barber picked up 785 votes this evening, as Pima and Santa Cruz counties added some votes to their totals in the 5pm hour.  Barber currently trails GOP challenger Martha McSally by only 1,293 votes (out of more than 187,000 counted so far). (50.12%-49.43%)

Tim Steller (Arizona Star) reports that more than 34,000 votes remain to be reviewed* in Pima County. As can be seen in the table above, Pima County has leaned in Barber's favor; Cochise County significantly favored McSally.

Andy Tobin has also closed his deficit by a couple of hundred votes, and trails Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick by 8,767 votes.

Wed. 4:51pm: Navajo County posted their report for the day.  They added 769 to Andy Tobin's count, and 507 to Ann Kirkpatrick's.  This cut Kirkpatrick's lead to 8,995. The percentages (of total votes) is 52.86% to 46.74%.  The Supt. of Publ. Instrxn and Prop. 122 percentages stayed the same.

Wed. 3:42pm: Cochise County, which had only had some early votes counted as of this morning, released its regular ballot numbers.  McSally won the border county handily, amassing 19,864 votes there, compared to Barber's 13,415.  McSally is now over 50%, with a 2,078 vote lead.  90,345-88,267. (50.36%-49.20%)  Pima County has about 46,000 earlies and provisionals left to count; that more-populous county has counted 51% for Barber (4,371 more votes for Barber than McSally).

Wed., 12:01pm: Pima County released updated figures, with 28 more votes being added to their totals.  Of those, Barber received 14, McSally received 14.  McSally still holds a 36-vote lead, 78,799 to 78,763.

* References to remaining provisional votes are to ALL provisional ballots counted. ALL will  be reviewed by elections workers. NOT ALL will be counted.

We welcome your comments about this post. Or, if you have something unrelated on your mind, please e-mail to info-at-arizonaspolitics-dot-com or call 602-799-7025. Thanks.