Lake, a former television news anchor in Phoenix, benefited from votes in some of the state’s reddest counties, such as Yavapai, where she won an overwhelming nearly 76% of the new votes to Gallego’s 22%. U.S. Congressman and Navy veteran Gallego had the advantage with new votes from Coconino County, 57% amassing to Lake’s 39%.

About 60% of voters in the Grand Canyon State live in Maricopa County, where Lake Gallego led by 2 percentage points in new votes on Friday. The county has come under fire for its slow count, both from Arizonans and from those across the country keeping an eye on the outcome of the race.

Maricopa County has one on average 13 days has fully counted ballots for the past sixteen years, but that is the case this year has been even slowerin part due to a lengthy two-page ballot that takes more time to process and tabulate.

As of Friday evening, about 81% of ballots in the state had been counted, with about 351,000 left to count in Maricopa County and nearly 629,000 statewide. At that moment, 2.8 million ballots had been countedof the state’s nearly 4.4 million registered voters, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Lake and her campaign continued their aggressive efforts Friday to recruit people to urge voters to fix any problems with their ballots, such as a missing signature on an early ballot envelope, so their votes count.

The supporter of newly elected President Donald Trump and her supporters remained optimistic about her chances of overtaking Gallego as more results come in.

“Guys, I’m walking through the voters that have yet to be counted in Arizona and between that and the voters that we know we’ve gone after, Kari Lake is in an incredible place,” Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of Turning Point USA, said in a message on social media site X. “This will be close and every vote matters, but I feel really good about what we know we have left.”

Turning Point USA is a right-wing student activist group based in Phoenix that has been a major player in Republican voting this election cycle.

“We have hundreds of full-time employees and hundreds more volunteers handling every last ballot in Arizona for Kari Lake,” said Charlie Kirk, CEO of Turning Point. posted on X Friday. “We are ruthless.”

Lake and Gallego, who has represented Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2015, waged bitter campaigns, taking turns trading personal criticism and accusations of extremism.

Gallego ran on a platform of making life more affordable for the middle and working class, restoring abortion rights and making measured increases in border security, including more manpower and better use of technology.

Lake copied Trump’s style in her campaign, calling for the completed construction of his border wall, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and an extension of his tax cuts.

Trump endorsed Lake both in her failed bid to become governor of Arizona in 2022 and in her bid for senator this year.

In the midst of her Senate campaign, Lake continued to do so challenge in vain the results of the gubernatorial race in court, and two years later she still hasn’t conceded the race. The Arizona Supreme Court Wednesday has rejected her latest appeal in the case.

Lake also faces the prospect of paying up damage yet to be determined to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, after she legally admitted guilt in his defamation suit regarding Lake’s false claims that Richer helped rig the 2022 governor’s race against her.