What happened in Arizona?

[Vosem]

The wave totally missed the Arizona House races (except, oddly, for giving Grijalva a bit of a scare in AZ-3). Kirkpatrick and Sinema both improved compared to 2012 -- Sinema especially so -- and it looks like Barber may end up pulling this out with a margin about the same as in 2012. Upballot, AZ voted in a landslide for a Republican gubernatorial candidate who'd been damaged in a primary, and all Republican statewide candidates triumphed -- and I'm pretty sure, considering they mostly outperformed Romney, they won AZ-1 and AZ-2. How did Kirkpatrick and Barber (even if he loses) manage to swim against the tide? Why did Sinema do so much better?

[IceSpear]

IIRC, the Republicans in AZ-1 and AZ-9 weren't exactly stellar candidates. I'm not sure about AZ-2. Maybe the Giffords ads had an effect?

[publicunofficial]

Part of it is poor GOP recruitment, moreso in AZ-09 and AZ-01 than AZ-02.

Also, Barber, Kirkpatrick, and Sinema have been shown to be competent politicians, making no mistakes in the past two years, raising good sums of money, and running great campaigns. All 3 of them look like statewide candidates.

[user12345]

Sinema for Gov 2k18.

[Gass3268]

Now we know why the Republicans in AZ want to kill redistricting reform.

[Miles]

As I said before, I had a friend working on Kirkpatrick's campaign and, from his updates, they were really running a top-notch ground effort. Also, I think the Navajo cancelling elections helped Kirkpatrick; the Navajo polling places weren't the same as the regular polling locations. I'd imagine only having to vote at one location on Tuesday was easier than going to two.