The Green Party may cost Democrats a Senate seat in Arizona

Arizona voters who went with Green Party Senate candidate Angela Green over Democrat Kyrsten Sinema might have cost the latter candidate the election. On Wednesday morning, with the race still not called, Republican Martha McSally had the slight lead of 49.3 percent of the vote with 99 percent of the precincts reporting, while Sinema had 48.4 percent of the vote.

The difference between McSally and Sinema comes down to 15,908 votes. Green has 38,597 votes in Arizona — in other words, if even half of the Green Party voters had voted for Sinema instead, she would likely be in the lead, not McSally.

That news likely makes Democrats feel queasy, with flashbacks to 2016. Some people blame Green Party candidate Jill Stein for costing Democrat Hillary Clinton the presidential election, since Stein's vote count in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin exceeded Trump's margin of victory in the same states. While FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver doesn't "really buy" that argument, it's certainly less easy to ignore in Arizona on Wednesday.

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