Republican Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is insisting that a Fox News poll showing her losing to Democrat Ruben Gallego by a wide margin is “absolute garbage.”
The poll, which was released on Wednesday, finds Lake losing by a massive 15 points to Gallego, who currently represents Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
It was the second survey released this month showing that Lake, an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump and his false “stolen” election claims, was losing to Gallego by double digits.
On Thursday, Lake denounced the poll during an interview on talk radio station KTAR, claiming that her own internal polling and partisan Republican polls showed a more accurate picture of the race because “nobody wins by 15 points.”
Scott Olson
Lake argued that it was “a testament to the strength of our campaign” that her own polls showed the race “tied.”
“I put zero stock in these polls,” Lake said of the surveys showing her losing to Gallego. “The ones you’ve mentioned, the public polls, have just been absolute garbage. I mean, it’s absolutely insane. 15 points, are you kidding? I mean, nobody wins by 15 points, OK?”
“The internal polling is what I look at, and um… there’s been a ton of phony, bogus polls,” she continued. “It’s meant to make the race look like it’s going in my opponent’s favor, but the real polls… say this race is tied.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to Fox News via email on Thursday.
As examples of “real polls,” Lake specifically cited a poll sponsored by the National Republican Senate Committee that showed her level with Gallego earlier this month and a poll conducted by pro-Lake super PAC Club for Growth, which showed her losing to the Democrat by 2 points.
Lake went on to claim that any support for Gallego was due to his campaign spending large amounts of money on advertisements meant to obscure his supposed history as “a radical.”
“Ruben has poured in tens of millions, I just recently heard $44 million, in ads trying to paint him as a moderate,” said Lake. “Well, we know he’s a radical. And I’ve endured tens of millions of dollars in attack ads and his numbers have not moved.”
“We’ve found out in some polling that when people find out just a little bit about his voting record, he drops 3 points,” she added. “So, our polling shows that it’s a tied race… you know, it’s a dead heat race.”
Earlier this week, the Arizona Police Association, that state’s biggest police association, announced that it was endorsing Gallego just days after its president delivered an in-person endorsement of Trump at a Phoenix-area rally that also featured Lake.
The Lake campaign shared a press release and statement to its website on Thursday touting “the real state of the race.” The campaign cited the same polls as Lake did in the radio interview, alongside an internal campaign poll showing her up by 1 point in July and an AARP showing her losing by 3 points during the same month.
“Any poll showing a large lead for either candidate is plainly out of step with Arizona’s electoral history and the current political landscape,” the campaign said. “High quality polling confirms what we’re seeing on the ground—enthusiasm for Kari Lake’s campaign continues to grow as we approach Election Day.”
An Emerson College poll released on Thursday shows Lake losing to Gallego by 7 points. A poll released by HighGround Public Affairs earlier this month showed Lake losing by 11 points, while other surveys taken in August have shown the Republican losing by smaller but clear margins.
If Lake does lose to Gallego in November, whether in a blowout or a close race, history suggests that she may not concede defeat.
Lake mirrored Trump’s election fraud claims by claiming that her own Arizona gubernatorial race had been “rigged” in 2022, before filing a series of legal challenges in a failed attempt to take the place of Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs.