The 2024 United States Senate election in Arizona will be held on November 5, 2024, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Arizona. Primary elections will take place on August 6, 2024. This election is the fifth consecutive even-number year in which a senate election will be held in Arizona after elections in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022.
Incumbent one-term centrist independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema was first elected as a Democrat in 2018 with 50% of the vote, succeeding retiring Republican Jeff Flake. Sinema left the Democratic Party in December 2022. Sinema has not declared if she will run for re-election, but filed paperwork to do so in April 2023. U.S. representative Ruben Gallego is seeking the Democratic nomination, while Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb is running for the Republican nomination, as is Kari Lake, the party's 2022 gubernatorial nominee. Due to the uncertainty regarding Sinema's intentions, the state's purple lean, and the potential for a three-way race, most analysts currently consider the race to be a tossup.
Background
Arizona is considered to be a formerly red but now purple state at the federal level, voting for Republican Donald Trump by 3.5 percentage points in 2016 and for Democrat Joe Biden by roughly 0.3 percentage point in 2020. Both parties have seen success in the state in recent years, with Democrats controlling the other U.S. Senate seat and the governorship after flipping the latter in 2022, while Republicans hold a majority of its U.S. House seats and control the state legislature.
Independents
Candidates
Filed paperwork
Kyrsten Sinema, incumbent U.S. senator (2019–present)
Endorsements
Fundraising
Democratic primary
Sinema was considered highly vulnerable to a primary challenge due to her opposition to several parts of the Democratic Party's legislative agenda. The most prominent dispute was over the Build Back Better Act, specifically the provisions concerning lowering prescription drug prices, as well as her opposition to increasing the minimum wage and to filibuster reform. Prospective polling showed Sinema trailing all of her potential challengers by wide margins, with U.S. representative Ruben Gallego being viewed by numerous political analysts as the frontrunner to challenge her. On January 22, 2022, the Arizona Democratic Party voted overwhelmingly to censure Sinema for a second time for voting against a carve-out to the filibuster in a Democratic-led effort to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
During the congressional consideration of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, Sinema did not initially announce support for the bill, doing so only after Democratic leaders agreed to remove a provision on closing the so-called carried interest tax loophole, the closure of which would have raised taxes on hedge fund owners and investment managers. This action renewed calls from Democrats for Sinema to face a primary opponent in her next election.
Sinema left the Democratic Party in December 2022 and registered as an independent.
Candidates
Declared
Andrew Becerra, engineer
Ruben Gallego, U.S. representative for (2015–present)
Declined
Kate Gallego, Mayor of Phoenix (2019–present) Greg Stanton, U.S. representative for (2019–present) and former mayor of Phoenix (2012–2018) (running for re-election)
Endorsements
Fundraising
Polling
Republican primary
Candidates
Declared
Kari Lake, former KSAZ-TV news anchor and nominee for Governor of Arizona in 2022 Mark Lamb, Pinal County Sheriff (2017–present) George Nicholson, business consultant Brian Wright, mechanical engineer
Filed paperwork
Alan White, investor, U.S. Air Force veteran, and Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in 2020
Declined
Juan Ciscomani, U.S. representative for (2023–present) Doug Ducey, former governor of Arizona (2015–2023) Abe Hamadeh, former prosecutor in the Maricopa County Attorney's office and nominee for Arizona Attorney General in 2022 (running for U.S. House, endorsed Kari Lake) Blake Masters, former president of the Thiel Foundation, former COO of Thiel Capital, and nominee for U.S. Senate in 2022 (running for U.S. House) Karrin Taylor Robson, former member of the Arizona Board of Regents (2017–2021) and candidate for Governor of Arizona in 2022 David Schweikert, U.S. representative for (2011–present) Kelli Ward, former state senator from the 5th district (2013–2015), former chair of the Arizona Republican Party (2019–2023), and candidate for U.S. Senate in 2016 and 2018