John McCain's struggle to hold onto his Senate seat

“I get a sense that McCain is running as hard in 2016 as he did in 1986 when he first ran for the U.S. Senate,” says Stan Barnes, an Arizona Republican consultant and former state lawmaker. “He has never been in the position of running for re-election in a presidential year with such an undefinable fluid group of variables floating around in the political atmosphere. It could make a guy wonder what the right move is.”

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The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia moved McCain’s race from likely Republican to leans Republican last year, an early signal of how much closer his race could be…

An April Rocky Mountain Survey showed McCain and Kirkpatrick in a dead heat — 42 percent apiece — with Kirkpatrick making gains in what has long been considered Republican territory: rural counties in Arizona. But underscoring just how difficult of a balancing act McCain has in front of him is the fact that McCain’s salvation thus far is that he has 50 percent of the Hispanic vote while Kirkpatrick has just 37 percent. It illuminates just how tricky it could be in the general election if Trump is at the top of McCain’s ticket, with all his talk of building a big old beautiful border wall.

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