TUCSON, Ariz. — Pima County is continuing its methodical work processing the remaining ballots from Tuesday's election.
On Thursday evening, the county released another 28,720 ballots, according to a news release from the elections department.
The ballots seem to be slightly favorable to Republicans in the race, shifting the presidential election toward Joe Biden by a few thousand votes.
This is big. Pima county, the liberal stronghold of Arizona, just posted 28,344 ballots. Breakdown
— The AZ - abc15 - Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 6, 2020
Biden: 13,045 (46%)
Trump: 14,484 (51.1%)
Trump now trails Biden by 56,547 in Arizona.
Why was the Pima drop big? Simply put it would have essentially closed the door on Trump. This does not mean that the trajectory has changed. It just means the drop from Maricopa in an hour still matters.
— The AZ - abc15 - Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 6, 2020
On the county level, the new ballots also shifted two tight races. Democrat Rex Scott's lead over Republican Steve Spain in the race for the Pima County Board of Supervisors is down to 2,400 votes -- 50.96% to 49.04%.
The race for sheriff is even closer. Democrat Chris Nanos narrowly leads Republican incumbent Mark Napier by just 6,200 votes, or just 1.3% of the vote.
The county says there are about 8,700 outstanding early ballots and 18,000 provisional ballots that need to be added to the total. Election officials need to process all early ballots before counting provisional ballots, in order to be certain no one who cast a provisional ballot also voted early.
