Clearly, Tucson Agenda readers are smarter than the political pundits in the Twitterverse.
As the dust settles on the elections, we’re going through the results of our Election Prediction Contest. You all did really well!
More than 60 readers took their best shot at guessing who would win certain races, what would happen with local ballot measures and an assortment of other questions.
And the winners are….drum roll, please…Levi Rubin, Linda Lyon and Mason Holler!
Congrats, you’ve all got some Agenda swag heading your way! (It was a three-way tie. Each missed two questions.)
Even though we aren’t sending prizes to everybody, you’re all winners in our book.
Let’s take a look at how you did.
On their way to D.C.
Many of you had your finger on the pulse of the race in Congressional District 7.
It was obvious Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was going to win, but nearly half of you accurately guessed the magnitude of that landslide.
She was up by 43 percentage points on Thursday night. If we include those of you who guessed the margin would be between 27 and 40 points, then basically everybody was a winner.
Blue was the color of choice at Adelita Grijalva’s election night party. (Adelita Grijalva/Instagram).
In neighboring CD6, readers were evenly split about whether the Associated Press would be able to call the race on election night. It was considered one of the most competitive House races in the country, after all.
Even though Democrat JoAnna Mendoza and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee were celebrating within minutes of the first results coming in around 8:30 on Tuesday night, the AP didn’t call the race until yesterday.
Soon after the race was called, Congressman Juan Ciscomani said in a statement that serving the people of CD6 was “the honor of my lifetime.”
A long time coming
The big story in Arizona politics this week is the Democrats flipping the Legislature.
Kudos to the 58% of readers who saw the blue tsunami coming. Remember, Democrats haven’t had the majority in the state House since 1966.
As the Arizona Agenda pointed out yesterday, the last time Democrats held a state government trifecta, this is what the Senate looked like.
Note that the two women in the bottom corner are secretaries. (Arizona Memory Project).
Even more impressive, most of you knew which way the wind was blowing in Legislative District 17.
This was one of the key districts Democrats needed to flip if they wanted to get a majority in the Legislature. And flip it they did.
Just under half of you guessed correctly that both House seats and the Senate seat would be blue by Wednesday morning. Basically everybody else guessed the Dems would have two seats, which isn’t far off.
As election officials count a rapidly dwindling pile of ballots, it looks like LD17’s new slate of Democratic legislators will be two-term Rep. Kevin Volk, Rep. Holly Lyon and Sen. Edgar Soto.
This really is the end of an era. The district is saying goodbye to Republican Rep. Rachel Keshel, the last of the Republican triumvirate, alongside former Rep. Cory McGarr and former Sen. Justine Wadsack, who swept into office in 2022 on a wave of election-denying nonsense.
We were gearing up to deal with some bogus claims of election malfeasance from Keshel, as were 70% of readers in the prediction contest.
In the end, Keshel didn’t say much after the election results came in. Like Ciscomani, she put out a statement yesterday saying serving her constituents was the “honor of my life.”
In fact, the election-denying crowd was surprisingly quiet this week throughout Arizona. We still had some weirdos, but it seems the extent of the GOP drubbing was enough to discourage post-election grifting.
Thankfully, nobody is going to rent out the Tucson Convention Center for Fraudit 2.0 anytime soon.
Speaking of election deniers, we also asked readers whether Southern Arizona would get the wrong kind of shoutout from President Donald Trump on election night.
The closest we saw was Trump talking up Andy Biggs, who, if you ever heard his Southern Arizona stump speech, you’d know is from Tucson. But that doesn’t really count.
Closer to home
Your political instincts also were pretty good with the local ballot measures.
Almost half — 48% of you — guessed Prop 421, the TEP franchise agreement, would fail. And it did, with 56% percent of Tucsonans rejecting the measure. (Fun fact: It failed by a similar margin in 2023.)
Locals hold handmade signs in opposition to extending the franchise agreement with TEP at last week’s Tucson City Council meeting. (Photo courtesy of Kathleen Dreier)
Another 23% guessed Prop 425, the county expenditure limit, would fail by the widest margin.
That one is still teetering on the edge of not passing. The “yes” vote has 50.3% of the vote, while 49.7% are voting “no.” We might have to wait until the provisionals are counted before we know its fate.
And 25% guessed all four local ballot measures would pass. Close, but no cigar. Prop 421’s defeat dashed those hopes.
Finally, we asked the question we end every election night with: How many ballots will Pima County still have left to count on Wednesday morning?
That one got tricky, but 57% of you put it in the right range: 50,000 to 100,000.
On Wednesday, Pima County had to revise their projection on uncounted ballots, starting at 50,000 in the morning and later revising the figure to 80,000.
Following some public criticism that the elections department wasn’t going to count on Wednesday, officials reversed course and counted about 13,000 ballots.
On Thursday, they counted the bulk of the remaining ballots.
Think we graded you unfairly? Make your case in our Slack channel.
We admire anyone willing to demand a recount over a T-shirt.