PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallegoa veteran of the Iraq War, is confronted by a famous former TV news anchor and stands firm Donald Trump rose Kari Lake in Tuesday’s election for the U.S. Senate in a state with a recent history of extremely close elections.

The race is one of the few that will determine the outcome majority in the Senate. It is a test of the strength of the anti-Trump coalition that has fueled the rise of Democrats in Arizona, which until 2016 was reliably Republican. Arizona voters have rejected Trump and his favored candidates in every state election since.

Arizona is one of seven battleground states expected to decide the presidency.

Gallego led Lake in early returns, which consisted of ballots received and counted before Election Day, and about half of the total expected votes. Gallego expressed confidence when he spoke to Democrats in Phoenix on Tuesday evening.

“We had a mantra in this campaign: go everywhere and talk to everyone,” Gallego said. “And that’s exactly what we did. We have not taken one vote for granted.”

Breaking with tradition, Lake and the Arizona Republican Party did not hold an election night party. Her usually active social media accounts were silent in the hours after polls closed.

The winner of the Senate race will replace Kyrsten Sinema, whose 2018 victory as a Democrat created a formula that the party has successfully repeated ever since.

Sinema left the Democratic Party two years ago after she antagonized the party’s left wing. She considered running for a second term as an independent leaned out when it was clear she had no clear path to victory.

Gallego maintained a significant fundraising advantage throughout the race. He relentlessly attacked Lake’s support for a Civil War-era state law that banned abortions under almost all circumstances. Lake took a middle ground on the issue, angering some of her right-wing allies by opposing a federal abortion ban.

Gallego portrayed Lake as a liar who will do or say anything to gain power.

He downplayed his progressive voting record in Congress and leaned on his personal story and his military service to build an image as a pragmatic moderate.

The son of immigrants from Mexico and Colombia, Gallego was raised in Chicago by a single mother and was eventually admitted to Harvard University. He enlisted in the US Marine Corps Reserve and fought in Iraq in 2005 in a unit that suffered heavy casualties, including the death of his best friend.

If elected, he would be the first Latino American senator from Arizona.

The lake became one star of the populist right with her 2022 campaign for governor of Arizona.

She never acknowledged it lose the race and called herself the “legitimate governor” in her 2023 book. She continued her failed court battle to overturn it even after she began her campaign for Senate, refusing to concede defeat just last week in a controversial CNN interview.

But as she visited a polling station on Tuesday, she told reporters: “I will accept the results of this year’s elections.”

Her dogmatic commitment to the lie that successive elections were stolen from Trump and her endeared her to the former president, who considered her his vice presidential running mate. But it has exacerbated her battle with moderate Republicans whom she alienated during her 2022 campaign when she discredited the late senator. John McCain and then-government. Doug Ducey.

She attempted moderation but struggled to maintain a consistent message on touchy topics including election fraud and abortion.

Lake focused instead on border security, a potent issue for Republicans in a state bordering Mexico record numbers of illegal crossings during the Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration. She promised a crackdown on illegal immigration and labeled Gallego as a supporter of “open borders.” She also went after his personal life, pointing out his divorce from Kate Gallego shortly before she gave birth. His ex-wife, now mayor of Phoenix, Gallego endorsed and campaigned with him.

Lake has spent the final weeks of the campaign trying to win over voters who support Trump, but were not sold to her.

Nearly four in 10 Arizona voters said the economy and jobs are the most important issues facing the country AP VoteCasta comprehensive survey of more than 110,000 voters nationally, including more than 4,000 voters in Arizona. About a quarter of Arizona voters said immigration is the most pressing issue, and about 1 in 10 cited abortion.

About half of Arizona voters had an unfavorable view of Lake, including about 4 in 10 who said they had a very unfavorable opinion of Lake, according to AP VoteCast. About 4 in 10 voters rated her positively.

About half of voters had a positive opinion of Gallego, and about four in ten voters said they had a negative opinion of Gallego.

Meanwhile, Arizona has two nearest varieties for US House, where Republicans David Schweikert And Juan Ciscomani are seeking re-election in districts that voted for Biden in 2020.

Schweikert, now in his seventh term in the House of Representatives, faces a challenge from former Democratic state lawmaker Amish Shah in Arizona’s 1st District, which includes north Phoenix, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Paradise Valley.

While Republicans have a voter registration lead in the affluent district, it has trended toward the center as suburban voters have turned away from Trump, reluctantly voted for Democrats or left their ballots blank. Redistricting ahead of the 2022 midterm elections has accelerated the trend.

Schweikert won reelection in 2022 by just 3,200 votes against a relatively unknown challenger who received minimal support from national Democrats. Shah, an emergency room doctor, emerged as the first winner out of a field of six Democrats.

In the 6th District, Ciscomani is seeking a second term in a rematch against Democrat Kirsten Engel, whom he defeated by 1.5 percentage points in 2022. The district, which includes a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border, runs from Tucson in the east to the New York border. State border of Mexico.

Ciscomani, a former Ducey aide who emigrated from Mexico as a child, calls border enforcement his top priority but has distanced himself from Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Engel, a law professor at the University of Arizona and a former state lawmaker, has pointed out that Ciscomani in February rejected a major bipartisan border bill that would have overhauled the asylum system and given the president new powers to deport migrants when asylum applications become overwhelming .

Of Arizona’s nine representatives in Congress, six are Republicans and three are Democrats.