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Governor Katie Hobbs holds a polling lead in the Arizona gubernatorial race over Representative Andy Biggs, who won the Republican nomination to challenge the Democratic incumbent in the key swing state.
Biggs won the Republican primary with roughly 70 percent of the vote Tuesday night, setting him up for the November election. Hobbs was first elected in 2022 and has built an early polling lead, despite President Donald Trump carrying Arizona by more than 5 points in the 2024 election.
The Arizona governor race is expected to be among the most competitive of the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats are optimistic about Hobbs’ polling lead and believe Trump’s declining approval rating could drive a 2018-style blue wave that boosts Democratic candidates across the country.
But Republicans note that Arizona was Trump’s strongest swing state in 2024, marking a rightward shift in a state that had become more competitive across prior election cycles.
Katie Hobbs vs. Andy Biggs: What Polls Show
Hobbs held a lead over Biggs in the latest polls of the governor race, though the latest data suggests the race will still be close.
A Noble Predictive Insights poll showed her leading Biggs 41 percent to 37 percent. Hobbs’ net favorability stood at +9 points compared to Biggs’ +5 points. But more Arizonans were unsure of their feelings toward Biggs—14 percent said they had no opinion or never heard of Hobbs, compared to 37 percent for Biggs.
Hobbs’ lead was bolstered by a strong performance among self-described moderates, 48 percent of whom said they would vote for her compared to 20 percent for Biggs.
The poll surveyed 996 registered voters from May 5 to May 7 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
A TIPP Insights poll, which was conducted from April 20 to April 24 among 1,159 likely voters, showed Hobbs up by double digits. She received 48 percent support to Biggs’ 38 percent in that poll.
An earlier Emerson College poll pointed to a much closer race—Hobbs’ support stood at 43 percent, compared to Biggs’ 43 percent. That survey was conducted among 850 registered voters from November 8 to November 10. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
Hobbs’ advantage stems from the fact that she is an incumbent governor who has had to work with a conservative state legislature, Thom Reilly, professor of public affairs and co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University, told Newsweek.
“This has moderated her, in the sense that she has had to work with the legislature in order to balance the budget and in order to get some key legislation,” he said.
He pointed to independents as a key voting bloc that will shape the outcome of the race, noting that neither candidate can win without them. It can be very difficult to know how these independent voters, the largest voting bloc in the state, will vote.
“They’re terribly unpredictable. They have no party loyalty. They move in and out of their independent status. They change their vote, so this key constituency in Arizona is hard to track,” he said.
In Arizona, Trump won independents over former Vice President Kamala Harris by a 53-44 margin in 2024. In 2020, both Trump and former President Joe Biden won 48 percent of this constituency.
Primaries tend to play to extremes, he said, so a central question facing Biggs is whether he will be able to chip away at Hobbs’ support among independent voters in November.
“The real question is whether Biggs can pivot from his portrayal that he has as very MAGA and very conservative to attract some of the independents,” he said.
Forecasters favor Hobbs. The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both classify the race as Lean Democratic.
In March, Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved it away from a toss-up race, with analysts Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman saying at the time that elsewhere, in New Jersey and Virginia, the 2025 governor races had seen Latino-heavy precincts that shifted rightward in 2024 vote more Democratic.
“For Hobbs, a Latino reversion could lessen the generic GOP edge in Arizona, which reasserted itself in a major way in 2024 as Trump carried the state by 5.5 points after he narrowly lost it in 2020,” they wrote.
They also noted that sitting governors not facing a major scandal are more difficult to defeat.
Midterm elections are viewed as a referendum on the sitting president. Historically, the party in the White House loses seats in the midterms, so Trump’s approval rating will loom over the race.
Civiqs, which tracks Trump’s approval rating in each state, found that 53 percent of Arizonans disapprove of Trump, compared to 42 percent who approve of him.
What Prediction Markets Show
Prediction markets favored Hobbs for reelection. Democrats had an 81 percent chance of victory on Kalshi and a 77 percent chance on Polymarket as Biggs won the primary on Tuesday.
Prediction markets allow traders to buy and sell contracts tied to political outcomes and current events, aggregating real‑money wagers into probability estimates.
Prices fluctuate as traders react to polling, fundraising, candidate developments and broader political trends. They measure trader sentiment at a given moment but do not always accurately predict the future.
Arizona’s Purple State Status
Arizona emerged as a key swing state over the past decade, with both parties scoring statewide victories. Trump won Arizona by about 5.5 points in the 2024 election, but on the same ballot, Democrat Ruben Gallego eked out a win in the Senate race, underscoring that Democrats are still competitive in the state.
Republicans have continued to outpace Democrats in voter registration numbers in Arizona. As of July 2026, there were 1,523,886 registered Republicans and 1,210,510 registered Democrats in the state. An additional 1,572,158 Arizonans were registered with other parties or were not affiliated with one, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Former President Joe Biden carried the state by under half a percentage point in 2020 against Trump. In 2016, Trump won Arizona by more than 3 points over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake by less than a percentage point in the 2022 gubernatorial election. Democrats did well in other statewide offices that year—Senator Mark Kelly won reelection by nearly 5 points, and Democrats also won the attorney general and secretary of state races.
Suburbs of Phoenix and Tucson will play a key role in the election. They shifted leftward for much of the 2010s as the state became more purple, but Trump did perform well in those areas in 2024.
Margins among Hispanic and Latino voters will also be closely watched in November.
Trump made inroads with these voter groups in 2024—one reason he managed to achieve such a relatively strong margin in Arizona. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won Latino voters in Arizona by 10 points (54 percent to 44 percent) in 2024, compared to Biden’s 24-point victory in 2020 (61 percent to 37 percent).
But polls suggest the president’s approval rating has slipped among these groups.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Yannick Demoustier.
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