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    • Is Eli Crane’s seat ‘in play’? Election observers change their forecasts
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    Is Eli Crane’s seat ‘in play’? Election observers change their forecasts

    Umito Posted on

    As Election Day approaches, Democrats and some observers are predicting one of Arizona’s congressional elections could be closer than expected.

    With weeks before the November 5 election and early voting already underway, several election analytics companies began predicting that Democrats were gaining ground in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, where the Incumbent Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz. facing a challenge from former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez.

    The district has long been considered a hot spot for Republicans. Then, in rapid succession, nonpartisan handicappers the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball all moved the district from its safest category to the “likely” Republican category.

    This has added some intrigue to the race in its final weeks, although analysts are careful not to overestimate their ratings.

    “I think Eli Crane still has a great chance to win,” said Kyle Kondik with Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “It’s just that there’s more activity and interest there than your average safe Republican or Democratic seat.”

    Democrats cite the rating change and a recent poll as evidence the seat is up for grabs.

    However, despite the growing buzz, a Democratic victory would be far from over.

    “Crane is still the big favorite here. This is not a random race,” Erin Covey said in the Cook Political Report. “But I think it’s become a race worth watching.”

    Signs that a Nose victory is unlikely

    If national Democrats believe the seat is changeable, that is not reflected in their party’s campaign finances. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, whose goal is to win a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, has not invested any resources in the race.

    By comparison, in Arizona’s highly competitive 1st and 6th Congressional Districts, the DCCC spent millions.

    Additionally, the basic configuration of the district heavily favors the GOP. About 39% of the district’s active voters are Republican, 30% are Democratic and 31% are not affiliated with any political party, according to the Arizona Secretary of State. That makes it more Republican than the state as a whole and is safe territory for the GOP.

    Jacob Rubashkin, of the analysis group Inside Elections, said that by his calculations, no Democrat has won the district in a statewide race since at least 2016. Most of the time, the margin Republican victory rate is between 10 and 10%. two digits.

    Former President Donald Trump, for example, won the district against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a 10-point margin, Rubashkin said.

    “Politically, he has a long history of voting for Republicans at every level of the ballot,” he said.

    That’s part of the reason why in 2022, Crane, then a political newcomer, managed to oust incumbent U.S. Rep. Tom O’Halleran, a well-established Democrat who had held that seat for years. Both parties spent millions of dollars racing in a redrawn district, but O’Halleran lost by eight points.

    The idea that Nez could outperform O’Halleran without the financial support of national Democrats, or the advantage of incumbency, strains some of the most trusted rules of politics.

    Crane himself said he was not concerned about the rating change.

    “It doesn’t really worry me. We have a really good team,” Crane said in an interview at a Trump campaign event in October.

    He declined to share his team’s internal survey, but said “it’s a lot better than some of the things we’ve seen floating around the Internet.”

    Democrats point to other encouraging signs

    Democrats nonetheless pointed to the hearings as a sign the seat was in play.

    There are promising signs for Nez. On the one hand, he was an excellent fundraiser. He raised about $4 million in total: not as much as Crane’s $7 million, but more than one would expect in a Republican stronghold.

    That allowed Nez to spend more than Crane on TV ads, Covey said, while Crane started buying TVs much more recently. Covey said Nez may have caught Crane “off guard.”

    Nez supporters promoted a recent poll conducted by Noble Predictive Insights in early October. The poll of 414 likely voters found the race tied, with both candidates receiving 42% support. 15% of voters are undecided.

    There are reasons to take this poll with a grain of salt: It goes against the district’s historical voting patterns and includes responses collected via online surveys, which some consider less reliable than telephone questionnaires. . But the poll had an outsized impact as one of the few publicly available indicators of the direction of the race.

    Kondik said the results showed Crane had “growth potential.”

    “To the extent that there are undecided people, you would expect that they would align more with the Republicans,” he said.

    Does Nez have a path to victory?

    James Gravitt, Nez’s campaign manager, said Democrats’ path to victory in the district is two-pronged: mobilizing Native American voters and persuading new rural voters to choose Nez over Crane.

    Nez’s support among indigenous voters is not universal. He lost his bid for re-election as president of the Navajo Nation in 2022 and continues to face resistance from some Republican-aligned tribal leaders. But if elected, he would be the first Native American to represent Arizona in Congress.

    Without sharing specific data, Gravitt said Nez’s campaign has excited Native voters. He said their campaign aimed to achieve historic levels of participation.

    “There really is something special when you give a district someone to vote for instead of someone to vote against,” Gravitt said.

    “If anyone could flip this seat, it would be someone like Nez,” Covey told the Cook Political Report.

    However, the strength of the indigenous vote alone is not enough to win the riding. Census data sets the district’s indigenous population at around 20%, and participation rates are relatively low among this group.

    This is why, to win, Nez must gain the support of the rest of the district. Gravitt bets that Crane scorched earth style in Congress has discouraged some voters who don’t believe it produced results.

    “Speaker Nez has shown himself time and time again to be the man and candidate of the people he is running to serve,” Gravitt said.

    Rubashkin said it was “telling” that many of Nez’s television ads have been apolitical, emphasizing on-the-ground issues like water management. The district’s partisan tilt means Crane will want to keep the race focused on national issues like immigration and crime, while Nez will want to talk about local issues, which could convince typically GOP-leaning voters to break with their party , he said.

    Nez also tried to pair Crane with Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake.

    “Lake is losing this district to Gallego, and she’s unpopular…even in a seat that Trump won handily at the top of the ticket,” Rubashkin said.

    Whether Nez wins or not, his candidacy could have ripple effects on other key Arizona races. Native voters helped deliver Arizona to President Joe Biden in 2020, and that demographic has once again become a highly sought-after voting bloc in the ongoing presidential race this year.

    Umito
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