Arizona was one of the closest states in 2020, perhaps the epitome of the modern purple state. Recent trends and demographic analysis nonetheless suggest it’s strongly moving toward the GOP.
The Grand Canyon State, home to conservative icon Senator Barry Goldwater, was once staunchly Republican.
It backed only one Democrat for president between 1952 and 2016 and normally sent two very conservative Republicans to the US Senate.
This changed in the Trump era. Democrats have won the last three Senate elections and narrowly captured the governor’s office in 2022.
President Biden’s narrow, 10,457-vote margin in 2020 is merely the best-known example of what’s now a clear trend.
As elsewhere across the country, college-educated white voters are the driving force behind this partisan switch.
In 2012, Arizonans with a college degree gave Mitt Romney 63% of their votes while those with graduate degrees backed Barack Obama by just a 54-42 margin.
Trump, however, won only 50% of those with only a four-year degree in 2020 and got clobbered 60-40 among graduate-degree holders.
Arizona is also home to a large and growing Latino population. It cast 15% of the state’s vote in 2016 and gave Hillary Clinton a 30-point margin over Trump.
Biden did worse, carrying Latinos by 24 points, but they cast 19% of the state’s votes.
Combined with two other nonwhite ethnic groups, Native Americans and blacks, Biden and Democrats’ newfound strength with college-educated whites is just enough to allow them to eke out narrow but consistent victories.
These trends are now reversing. Latinos seem to be trending toward the GOP here, much as national polls are showing.
Republican 2022 gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake did worse than Trump had two years earlier in much of the state but did better in Latino-heavy Santa Cruz and Yuma counties.
The exit poll also showed Lake lost Latinos by only 4 points statewide. She would easily have won had she done as well as Trump did among whites.
Voter-registration data also show a shift toward Republicans. Registered Democrats were 32.2% of all voters in November 2020.
The latest available figures, from April, reveal they now total only 29.4%. Republicans, on the other hand, have slightly increased their share of registered voters, from 35.2% to 35.4%.
The partisan balance has thus shifted 3 points in the GOP’s favor since Biden won by just 0.3%.
This is why Arizona polls show Trump with consistent leads. The RealClearPolitics average has him ahead of Biden by 5.4 points in a two-way race and 6.4% when all candidates are tested.
Biden has not led in a single Arizona poll since April 2023.
These trends should help other Republicans too. Democrats are targeting two GOP-held House seats — Dave Schweikert’s Scottsdale-based 1st and Juan Ciscomani’s Tucson-based 6th — Biden carried in 2020.
The seats both have large populations of affluent, college-educated voters, which is why they’re competitive at all.
But the Democratic potential edge is so small that even tiny shifts towards the GOP can protect the incumbents.
Voter-registration data show the Democratic share has dropped in both seats since January 2023.
Even Kari Lake could benefit from the GOP tailwind. Lake is widely known because of her recent gubernatorial race but suffers from low positive name identification because of her unfounded claims her race was stolen.
Despite this, her Democratic opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego, leads by only 2 points in the RCP polling average.
His lead is telling, but millions of dollars of television ads blasting his progressive voting record could drive his name identification down to Lake’s level.
If that happens, Arizona’s new GOP lean could carry her over the finish line.
All eyes on election night will be focused on Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and her burgeoning suburbs.
The county cast 61% of the state’s votes in 2020, a much larger share than even New York City casts in the Empire State.
Combined with its exurbs in Pinal County, the Phoenix metro area casts about two-thirds of the statewide total.
The combined Democratic vote margin in these two counties was nearly identical to the final statewide margin for both Biden and Gov. Katie Hobbs.
If Trump and Lake can retake Maricopa or even hold Democrats to a lead of 20,000 votes or fewer, they will surely win.
Early voting begins Oct. 9, so the time for Democrats to reverse the state’s direction is short. Unless they can show progress in polls and registration statistics soon, Arizona may be returning to its historic role as a Republican-leaning state.
