Election 2026: Breaking down the results

And for what these numbers actually mean for Arizona and our country moving forward, we have Stan Barnes here, founder and president of Copper State Consulting. Good morning. Good morning. I'm tired. I bet you are. Were you watching those results all night long? Yeah, I was up late watching it early to be with you. This is a very big day. I was saying just a moment ago, there's no way to exaggerate this on the Arizona scale. I was elected to state house when I was a young man in 1988, and there is nothing that compares to the seismic degree of defeat. For the Republican Party in the state of Arizona, you have to go all the way back 60 years to get this kind of lineup and the Republicans even lost the mine inspector of all things. And so it is it is hard to exaggerate. And today the autopsy begins for the Republican Party. There are shocked people on both sides of the aisle waking up this morning saying. What just happened in Arizona? Well, that's what I was going to ask, Stan. What can we kind of deduce from some of these huge numbers, not only here in Arizona, but across the country, swinging for Democrats? Yeah, and that is the million-dollar question. And, of course, I don't have the answer this morning. But that is what is going to be top of mind for everyone, especially on the losing side, on the Republican side. What happened? Is it a repudiation of Donald Trump? Is it voters just plain upset about... The price of gas and a war and perhaps just the chaotic nature of politics in general. Is it just a changed election? Voters just said, I don't care who's in office, I want a new guy. That happens every now and then. But it does feel like it's wrapped around the president because he's so ubiquitously everywhere and his personality is such friction for so many people. It feels like it begins and perhaps ends with Donald Trump and a repudiation of him. Let's talk about what's happening, I guess, locally with the legislature. What's the picture with the- Yeah, the latest is, as of this morning, and there may be some changes because votes are still being counted, but Democrats are certain to take the majority in the state Senate and in the state House. They may even have- A super majority in the state Senate, that is 20 out of 30 seats. Mind you, they had 13 or they have 13 at the moment. So a tremendous gain by Democrats in the state legislature. This is gonna shift everything as we know it, our lovely state capitol. Katie Hobbs has been a one woman veto record machine. And she's been administering the executive branch. That's all gonna turn on its head now instead of. Instead of being adversarial with the majority of the legislature, she is going to be one of them. What does this mean? There are going to be new policies and new initiations by this party that has had pent-up desire for six decades to do something different. Katie Hobbs is going to have an entirely different role, and we're going to see what kind of governor she really is with a governing majority. She's going to need a new pack of pens, so she'll be signing bills left and right. She might be signing bills. She also might be tempering, adult-like, some of the more left-oriented impulses of the Democratic Party. Watch. I think she's going to end up being this kind of... moderate thoughtful person. Well, she is that already, but I think she'll play that role with her own party in the majority. It's hard to exaggerate the desire that is pent up by Democrats. They have been told to sit down and be in the corner and be quiet for 60 years, basically. And every now and then they get a moment of which they can make something happen when the Republicans fracture. That is all upside down now. Which reminds me, the Republicans have not been in the minority, and they're going to wonder what to do, because now they have no power, and all they have is a microphone on the floor of the Senate or the House. I was going to ask you about some of the other big races. Obviously, CD1, 15 years that Schweikert held that seat as a Republican, and now that has switched over to a Democrat. Was that kind of a surprise? Did you see that one coming? Yeah, the degree of defeat, again, is the surprise. Everyone knew that was going to be a close race. But, Amish Shah had run and lost two years ago. And it's a tremendous candidate and a celebrity in his own right as an Arizona Cardinal. But here we are with that kind of vote spread. So the theme is the degree, nobody that watches Arizona politics was right about this election. Do you think it was the door knocking that Amish Shah did? He is the hardest working man in Arizona politics. He's knocked more doors than any human being I know in Arizona politics. And it is obviously paid off. That might be a pure referendum on the president. I mean, Shah ran ads, said, Feeley was Donald Trump and Donald Trump is Jay Feeley. And here's the result. Any other surprises from last night? I know you keep talking about how it's just like the magnitude of the sweep is pretty impressive. But is there anything else that kind of surprised you? You said the mine inspector even in Arizona. All the way down. Like I said, you have to go back to 1966 to get this kind of thing. Just ironically, Andy Biggs, a Republican nominee who lost, his daughter is the Republican nominee for the state Senate in Gilbert, the Republican bastion of Gilbert. And as of this morning, she is losing her race. To a Democrat, I cannot name because no one thought that person would win and that is the magnitude of the defeat. It's an incredible thing to measure and witness. What does it tell you too about Arizona and the people who are voting and our constituents and people who live in our state now? We are constantly growing. We have a lot of transplants who move here and we're constantly changing. We are. I have said for my entire political lifetime that Arizona is a center-right state. And even as Katie Hobbs and Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly are elected statewide, they still are Democrats that run like independent people, even conservative people, Thank you very much. moderate people. Now things feel different. I can no longer say we're a center-right state. We're not. We're at the best or the worst, we're center. Because we have an entire Democratic lineup, including a Democratic legislature. We are a blue state. That's what we are. We're a blue state. And it feels like it changed overnight. It did. It just feels like overnight we went from being Goldwater center-right libertarian to something approaching Colorado. Thank you. That earthquake underneath our feet for people like me that live in this ecosystem is just hard to exaggerate. Steve, we've only got about a minute left, but I wanted to kind of swing back to something you said earlier about kind of a post-mortem. What is this going to look like, and how do the Republicans kind of dissect what happened? What does that even look like? Yeah, the Republican leadership is decimated and there will be gatherings all over the state for the next year trying to figure out what happened. Personalities will emerge, leadership, new leadership will emerge. There's some analogy to the way nature burns down a forest and new growth happens. The party will find itself. The pendulum swings, Democrats have been in the wilderness for a long time, Republicans Are in the wilderness, they're going to have to regroup and decide what they are, what they're made of, why the message didn't work and they're going to change things. As I say, a personality or two will emerge and the Republican Party will have a different face. But for right now, everyone has got their head on their desk wondering, is this a nightmare or will I wake up from it? Because no one expected this. Pinch me. Right? That's what a lot of people are probably saying this morning. Stan, thank you for your time this morning. Good to be here. Thanks, Stan.