Yassamin Ansari's 42-vote lead over Raquel Terán will go to a mandatory recount in CD3

Yassamin Ansari is on pace to become the next U.S. representative from Arizona's 3rd Congressional District, but it'll probably be a week and a half before an official winner is the Democratic primary is announced because of a pending recount.

The big picture: When Maricopa County finished counting votes Monday, Ansari, a former Phoenix City Council member, led Raquel Terán by 42 votes.

• Ansari led the former state lawmaker and ex-Arizona Democratic Party chair by more than 4 percentage points at the end of Election Day.
• Her lead consistently shrank as the county tallied early ballots dropped off at polling places.
• Because the south and west Phoenix district is overwhelmingly Democratic, the primary winner is effectively guaranteed to win the general election.

What's next: The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will canvass its election results on Aug. 12.

• Secretary of State Adrian Fontes will canvass the statewide results on Aug. 15, but he'll go to court the day or day after the county's canvass to get a judge's order for a recount, spokesperson Aaron Thacker told Axios.
• State law requires recounts in races where the margin of victory is equal or lesser to half a percent of the total ballots cast between the two candidates.
• Once a judge issues that order, Thacker said, a recount is expected to last two or three days and could be finished as soon as Aug. 16.

Context: It can be hard to predict how a recount will play out.

• In the 2022 general election, Democrat Kris Mayes initially led Republican Abraham Hamadeh by 511 votes. But an automatic recount revealed a large batch of uncounted ballots in Pinal County that narrowed Mayes' lead to 280 .
• In that year's Democratic primary, Teresa Lopez's three-vote lead over Robert Meza in a Maricopa County justice race didn't change by a single vote after a recount.

What they're saying: "While we are confident this lead will hold, it is important to let the vote-counting process fully play out through an automatic recount. … We look forward to working with Maricopa County and the Attorney General's Office to ensure a smooth process going forward," Ansari said in a press statement.

The other side: "We are just 42 votes behind, and we're entering into a recount process. Especially in Arizona, we know that democracy is worth waiting for, and it is critical that every vote is counted," Terán said in a statement.