In a move that could vastly improve Democratic chances of picking up a Senate seat in Arizona, the Green Party candidate has officially dropped out of the race with less than a week before Election Day. She’s urging her supporters to cast their ballots for the Democratic Senate candidate, Kyrsten Sinema.
Green Party candidate Angela Green broke the news in an interview with an NBC News affiliated in Phoenix, Arizona.
Video:
BREAKING AZ Green Party’s U.S. Senate candidate Angela Green tells #12News she’s dropping out & throwing support to @kyrstensinema. Green was polling up to 6% in toss-up race. https://t.co/WwxN7M13b0 #AZSEN pic.twitter.com/GA4tfSyAoO
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— BrahmResnik (@brahmresnik) November 1, 2018
Green said that after watching the debates, she recognized that Sinema’s positions were similar to hers, and she didn’t want to risk handing the election to Republican candidate Martha McSally.
She encouraged her supporters “to vote for a better Arizona, and that would be for Sinema.”
The Democrats may have just picked up a Senate seat
The race between Sinema and McSally has been one of the closest Senate elections in the country with the RealClearPolitics average showing the race a virtual tie.
In the most recent NBC News/Marist poll, Green pulled in six percent of the vote. If those voters cast their ballot for the Democratic candidate without Green on the ballot, the Democrats have a solid chance of winning the Senate seat.
This news comes after other Senate polls show a slew of red-state races within single digits, even after many in the media have written off Democratic chances of winning the chamber.
As I noted yesterday after Fox News released a handful of Senate polls, it was always be going to be tough for Democrats to win control of the Senate, even in a wave election year, but if progressive voters turn out in larger-than-expected numbers next week, it is not inconceivable that Democrats can pull off some surprising victories.
On Thursday in Arizona, one of those contest just moved a little closer to the Democratic column.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
