Kari Lake is in a deep hole in Arizona. Turns out voters just don't like her

Alarms should be ringing in the Arizona Republican Party. Red flags should be waving wildly and antennae should be fully upright and tuned in.

A new poll puts Donald Trump up by five points in Arizona, showing his command to Republicans in Congress to kill Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s border fix was smart politics.

But that same poll puts Kari Lake in a fairly deep hole. Just 36% of voters polled this month by CBS News/YouGov would vote for Lake if the election were held today, compared with 49% for Democrat Ruben Gallego.

That’s a deeper hole than other recent polling shows, but all the polls have one thing in common.

When it comes to the GOP ticket, Kari Lake’s a drag. And when it comes to winning moderate voters, that drag becomes an outright disaster.

Trump is reportedly frustrated with Lake

Not even Lake’s fiery rhetoric on invading migrants is convincing voters that the former TV anchor has the right stuff for the Senate.

It certainly explains why she hasn’t been popping up at Mar-a-Lago of late with the rest of the GOP glitterati. Or making a spectacle of herself outside Trump’s hush money trial in New York.

The Washington Post reported in late April on Trump’s growing frustration with Lake, wondering whether she would hurt his chances in a key battleground state.

This poll suggests Trump might not be all that far off the mark, though Joe Biden’s inability — or refusal — to turn away migrants who cross the border illegally considerably boosts Trump’s prospects here. The poll shows Trump at 52% in Arizona to Biden’s 47%.

Trump also seems to benefit from the economy, with 52% of Arizona voters saying they expect to be financially worse off if Biden is reelected.

He’s Teflon on abortion. But Lake? Not so much, it would seem.

Polls suggest voters just don't like her

She’s been all over the place on the issue, having managed over the last month to both support and oppose that 1864 law that criminalizes abortion even in cases of rape and incest.

Fully 72% of the 1,510 Arizona voters polled support repeal of the 1864 law and 66% said they want abortion to be legal in most cases, a stellar sign for the Arizona Abortion Access Act that likely will be on the Nov. 5 ballot.

But here is the most interesting part of the poll when it comes to Lake.

Fully 53% of those polled said abortion will not affect their motivation to vote.

Kari Lake's 'explosive' lawsuit: Just blew up in her face

That suggests voters aren’t low on Lake because of her waffling abortion stand.

Apparently, they just don’t like her. While Trump draws support from 93% of Republican voters, Lake draws only 73%.

“It’s generally believed that a candidate should get 85-90% of their own party,” one longtime Republican consultant told me.

Lake remains the frontrunner for Senate

“If we see a number below 90, it’s an alarm sign. She’s not just below 90, she’s below 80. And here’s another brutal number for her: Trump is at 91% with conservatives. She’s at 75%. Another sign she’s got real problems with core GOP voters.”

As for those all-important moderates, they really, really don’t like her. Just 22% said they would vote for her while 58% support Gallego.

That would track with polling from last July. In that Noble Predictive Insights poll, a whopping 51% of Arizona voters had an unfavorable opinion of Lake.

Yet here she is, nearly a year later, the Arizona Republican Party’s presumptive pick for the Senate nomination.  A Republican Party that, in its fealty to MAGA and MAGites, has managed to lose three successive Senate races and every key statewide elective office.

The CBS/YouGov poll, conducted May 10-16, puts Lake 13 points behind Gallego — 10, if you consider the poll’s 3.3% margin of error.

There is another GOP candidate in the race

Not that anybody has noticed, but Republican primary voters do have options. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb also is running for the Senate, but the state Republican Party hierarchy isn’t even planning debates.

“This should be a loud wake up call for Republicans who are tired of losing elections,” Lamb said in response to the poll.

But, of course, it won’t be. When it comes to the once-Grand Old Party, it’s all Lake, all the time.

It’ll be interesting to see if Republicans in Arizona wake up on Nov. 6, slap their foreheads and ask the question that everybody else has been asking about them for awhile now:

What were we thinking?

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kari Lake is in a deep hole in Arizona with no ladder in sight