Detailed analysis shows how moderate Arizona GOP voters helped defeat Trump-backed candidates

In Arizona, the election results show that it wasn't about Democratic turnout in the November election that helped defeat far-right Republican candidates. It turns out it was GOP voters themselvs, the Arizona Republic reported Wednesday.

“An Arizona Republic analysis of voting patterns, especially in Maricopa County, shows a simpler reason: Many Republicans just didn’t vote for the Republican candidates.”

It makes sense to analysts like CNN's Gloria Borger who said that GOP gubernatorial Kari Lake made a "bad bet" by trying to insult and attack her own potential voters.

A Republican strategist who didn't want to be named because they were still working on the ground in Arizona, told CNN, "Kari Lake told a legion of John McCain supporters across Arizona that they could go to hell. Tonight, they returned the favor."

It's a reference to a moment when Lake was speaking at C-PAC and told the crowd that her campaign "drove a stake in the heart of the McCain machine."

NBC News confirmed that they saw the same thing with their analysis.

“It was a Trump problem,” a Republican operative involved in the 2022 election told NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur. “Independents didn’t vote for candidates they viewed as extreme and too closely linked with Donald J. Trump.”

The research revealed that Independent voters, which make up 31 percent of the electorate, voted for Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 49 percent to 47 percent. But in states like Arizona, the Republic showed that not only did Democrats and Independents dodge the right wing, but so did the GOP.

Read the full report at the Arizona Republic.