LIVE UPDATES: Arizona 2026 Midterm Election

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Two school governing board members are seeking reelection to continue approving budgets, amending policies and appointing the district superintendent.

Raul Rodriguez was first elected to the board in 2022. He’s a Marine veteran, and a former officer at the Pima County Sheriff’s Office and in the U.S. Border Patrol.

“My priorities begin with maintaining safe and secure schools where students can focus on learning and educators can focus on teaching. I am committed to strengthening academic achievement, expanding educational and career opportunities, and ensuring every student is prepared for success beyond the classroom,” Rodriguez wrote in his statement of interest.

John Sparks, who was first elected in 2014, is seeking his fourth term on the board. He’s a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and faculty member at the University of Arizona College of Nursing.

“During my time on the Board, our students have seen increased access to technology and expanded opportunities for individualized education, both in person and online. Though my own children have now graduated, I remain every bit as engaged in the success and outcomes of every student in our district,” Sparks wrote in his statement of interest.

Proposition 428 will also appear on Sahuarita ballots this year. It proposes the continuation of an existing property tax that funds academics, extracurriculars and safety staff.

The average homeowner would still pay around $23 a month toward the override, according to the district. The district expects to collect around $428,000 next school year from the override funds.

Almost 22,000 residents are registered to vote in the Sahuarita Unified School District which enrolls about 6,000 students.

Voters across the state will be deciding on Proposition 320, a Republican-backed measure that would require districts in Pima County to spend at least 60% of their budgets on direct instruction.

Vox Efx

Election Day is here, and a new poll from Noble Predictive Insights, a top Phoenix-based pollster, has Democrats up in three of four polled statewide elections.

Independents buoy Democrats

In the gubernatorial race, Democratic incumbent Katie Hobbs is leading Republican candidate Andy Biggs by six points. According to the poll, 94% of Democrats support Hobbs, while 85% of Republicans support Biggs.

If that were the end of the story, the race would be closer — Republicans outnumber Democrats in Arizona by about 6%. But Hobbs is also drawing substantial support from Independents, 62% of whom back her, according to the poll.

Mike Noble, CEO of Noble Predictive Insights and the chief analyst behind the poll, said Hobbs’ lead among independents is unprecedented.

“Hobbs is just doing incredibly well with Independent voters,” Noble said. “I've been doing Arizona politics for 20 years. I've never seen any party that high with Independent voters before.”

Independent support was also instrumental in the leads enjoyed by two Democrats in the other statewide elections included in the poll.

Incumbent Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who has a 4% lead over her opponent Warren Petersen (R), is leading Independents by 33%. In the Secretary of State election, incumbent Democrat Adrian Fontes is drawing 63% of Independents compared with Republican Alexander Kolodin’s 28% share.

Superintendent’s race defies the trend

Of the four statewide races surveyed in the poll, the only race with a Republican advantage is that for the Superintendent of Public Instruction, in which state Treasurer Kimberly Yee has a two-point lead over Democrat Teresa Leyba Ruiz.

Noble noted that Yee’s advantage is slight. In an unreleased poll from a few weeks ago, he said, the two candidates were tied.

At the same time, Noble said, Yee’s advantage is largely due to her support from a larger share of Independent voters than the other three Republican candidates in the poll. Ruiz still leads those voters by 10%, but the gap is much smaller than in the other races.

“Republicans outnumber Democrats in this likely-voter sample, yet Democrats lead three of the four races. A big part of that story is Independents,” Noble wrote in the report. “Yee is still losing those voters, but by a much smaller margin than the other Republican candidates. That’s what makes her race different.”

‘A tough environment for Republicans’ 

The poll also measured President Donald Trump’s approval rating, finding that just 44% of participants approved of his performance in a normally right-leaning state.

According to Noble, that’s one reason why Republicans are struggling this election.

“The midterms are a referendum on the president,” he said. “So basically, because of the policies coming out of Washington, and Trump being at low approval numbers, it's really a drag on the Republican ticket as a whole.”

Still, nothing is certain at this juncture. Democrats are more likely to vote early, which opens up a potential surge from Republican voters today.

That’s borne out in the poll, which found that Hobbs leads by nearly 30 points among the half of the sample that had already cast their ballot, while Biggs leads by 15 points in the half that hadn’t.

About half of all requested mail-in ballots have already been cast. So far, registered Republicans and Democrats have voted in roughly equal numbers — but only 41% of registered Republicans have voted early compared to 49% of Democrats.

That points to the potential for early Democratic leads that could be made up by late Republican voting once counting starts.

The poll was conducted between Oct. 26 and 28, and surveyed a sample of 511 likely voters, who were demographically weighted to reflect the larger Arizona electorate.