1952 United States Senate election in Arizona
The 1952 United States Senate election in Arizona was held on November 4, 1952. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland ran for re-election to a third term, but was defeated by the Republican nominee and future candidate for President of the United States, Barry Goldwater.
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| Turnout | 82.28% (registered voters) | ||||||||||||||||
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County results Goldwater: 50-60% McFarland: 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% | |||||||||||||||||
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| Elections in Arizona |
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On Election Day, November 4, 1952, Barry Goldwater defeated incumbent Ernest McFarland by a slim margin, winning by 6,725 out of approximately 260,000 votes cast, becoming the first Republican to win an Arizona U.S. Senate election since 1920. Goldwater, writing to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, said of the results, "The election victory was not entirely a surprise, because we knew that McFarland, carrying the weight of Truman's mistakes around his neck, would have a difficult time winning, particularly in view of the fact that I had spent nearly all of my life campaigning for this job, whether I realized it or not."
The election marked the end of the Senate career of Ernest McFarland, who was first elected in 1940 and had served as co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Navajo-Hopi Indian Administration in addition to Senate Majority Leader. He was later elected Governor of Arizona in 1954 and ran unsuccessfully for his former Senate seat in 1958. This was the second consecutive election in which a Senate party leader lost re-election.
This election would mark the beginning of a decades-long stretch of Republican electoral success in Arizona; Republicans would go on to continuously hold at least one of the state's Senate seats until 2020, when Democrats took control of both Senate seats in Arizona.