Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs narrowly defeated Republican former television journalist Kari Lake.

[5] Going into the election, most polling had Lake leading and analysts generally considered the race to either be a tossup or leaning towards the Republican.

According to Ron Brownstein of CNN in 2023, Hobbs won independent voters by 7 percentage points, which contributed to Lake's defeat.

[87][88] Hobbs refused to debate Lake, which became a highly discussed issue of the campaign, resulting in criticism from Republicans.

[221] On November 17, Lake refused to concede defeat, and announced she was assembling a legal team to challenge the results.

[222][223] Lake alleged voter disfranchisement due to ballot printing problems and long waiting lines in Maricopa County, which had elections run by local Republican officials Bill Gates and Stephen Richer.

[222][224] In 70 out of 223 Maricopa County polling sites, voting machine ballots were printed too lightly to be read by tabulators; the problem was caused by a printer setting which had not shown widespread issues during prior testing.

[222][223][227] Bill Gates, the Republican chair of Maricopa's Board of Supervisors, partially blamed the long lines on Arizona Republican Party chairwoman Kelli Ward for discouraging voters from using Box 3; she had claimed that Box 3 should not be used as "Maricopa County is not turning on their tabulators downtown today".

[229] While Lake alleged that Republican-dominated areas in Maricopa County were disproportionately affected by the printing problems, The Washington Post found that the percentage of registered Republicans in affected precincts (37%) was very close to the percentage of registered Republicans across Maricopa County (35%), and also found that some Democrat-dominated areas also faced the printing problems.

[228] Arizona's Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright demanded that Maricopa County explain the election problems, stating: "These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa's lawful compliance with Arizona election law".

[241] On December 19, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed eight of ten counts of Lake's lawsuit, regarding invalid signatures on mail-in ballots, incorrect certification, inadequate remedy, as well as violations of freedom of speech, equal protection, due process, the secrecy clause, and constitutional rights.

[247][248] On December 24, judge Thompson dismissed Lake's remaining case, as the court did not find clear and convincing evidence that misconduct was committed.

[254] Lake also attempted to transfer her appeal directly to the Arizona Supreme Court, which denied this on January 4, 2023, ruling that there was "no good cause" to do so.

[6][256] The appeals court found that "Lake’s only purported evidence" that long lines at voting centers "had any potential effect on election results was, quite simply, sheer speculation.

[263] Thompson later acknowledged that the scope of Lake's claim of misconduct also extended to Maricopa County's lower level signature reviewers.

[267] The results of an independent investigation into the 2022 election's printing problems was published in April 2023; the investigation was led by a retired chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, Ruth McGregor, who concluded that "the primary cause of the election day failures was equipment failure", and that no evidence gathered gave "clear indication that the problems should have been anticipated".