I assume you're referring to early voting. What makes you believe he got "thousands" of votes at this point?
“I assume you’re referring to early voting. What makes you believe he got “thousands” of votes at this point?”
Do a rough estimate based the number of ballots returned already (~800k), and the percentage of votes a libertarian gets in AZ (~1.5%), and you’d get around 12,000 votes.
Libertarians only exist to gift elections to democrats. The lib got 51,465 votes in 2020 AZ presidential election. Trump lost by 10,457.
As with most races, the Marc Victor running as a Libertarian has seen his polling shrink as it gets closer to election day, but this is still good news. Masters is basically a libertarian himself, so it’s reasonable that most voters who would have pulled the lever for Victor will probably go with Masters.
Even if Victor would have received 2-3% of the vote, and even if only half of those switch, that could easily provide the margin of victory (heh) to Masters in a tight race.
That said, polling shows Kelly and Masters in a dead heat, which, if history holds, means that Masters has anywhere from a 4-7% lead as of today. Add a point and a half from the Libertarian vote, and it should put Masters over the top.
Big question is attitudes among hard core Libertarian voters about VBM and early voting: Dems seem to love it, Rep voters don’t trust it. I would imagine that Libertarians are even less trusting of the state than Reps, so they should be over represented at the polls vs. early voting.
Wonder if any FReepers have any intel on Libertarian early voting attitudes?
The Green candidate got 57,000 votes when Sinema was elected. I would imagine the Libertarian will get at least 20,000.