Can Democrats win Arizona again in 2024?
The entire nation will vote on the next president of the United States this fall, but the election will likely come down to seven key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. With the outsized importance of these states, it's worth taking a closer look at the data we have in each of them — not just where the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump stands today, but also each candidate's path to victory and what issues could tip the election. Next up in our series is Arizona.
The history
Arizona voted for the Republican candidate for president in every election since 2000 until four years ago, when it narrowly supported President Joe Biden. When some outlets projected — correctly, though controversially given the number of outstanding votes remaining — that Arizona was projected to flip from red to blue on election night in 2020, protestors gathered outside the Maricopa County office where votes were being counted. In the aftermath, Arizona became one of several states that tried to challenge the Electoral College results by attempting to submit a fake slate of electors. Prosecutions in cases related to that effort are still ongoing, and Arizona has since been something of a hotbed for GOP election denial.
Biden's 2020 win was certainly narrow: He won by about 11,000 votes, or 0.3 percent of the vote. That placed Arizona just over 4 percentage points to the right of the national popular vote, which Biden won by 4.5 points, continuing the leftward trend in the state. In 2016, Arizona lay 5.6 points to the right of the national vote, as Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 3.5 percent, while Clinton won the national popular vote by 2.1 percent. That had been a huge jump from 2012, when Arizonans voted 13 points more Republican than the nation.
The 2024 polls
The polls in Arizona could hardly be closer. As of Oct. 24 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern, Trump leads Harris 48.6 percent to 46.7 percent in 538's polling average of the state.* While Trump's lead is narrow, he's maintained it fairly consistently over the past month and is a slight favorite.
If the current polling averages predict this year's results, that would mean Arizona remains about 4 points redder than the nation: At the same time, Harris leads Trump in 538's national polling average by just under 2 points.
The demographics
Election outcomes in Arizona often are determined by Phoenix and its suburbs in Maricopa County, where the 2.4 million voters comprise 59 percent of all Arizona's registered voters in 2024. As in many other states, voters in the state's urban core of Phoenix, as well as Tucson to the south, have been moving toward Democratic candidates, while the rural parts of the state trend toward Republicans and form a solid base for Trump. Based on an average of polls between Sept. 24 and Oct. 24 that included demographic crosstabs by urban/suburban/rural status, Trump leads the vote of rural Arizona voters by about 22 points whereas Harris is winning the urban vote by 10 points. The suburban vote also goes to Harris, but by far less — she is leading by around 1 point.
Arizona also has a large proportion of voters of color. Nearly one in four voters in Arizona are Latino. According to a September Suffolk University/USA Today poll of Hispanic likely voters in the state, nearly half of that group, 49 percent, are registered as Democrats, while around a quarter are registered as Republicans and the rest are not affiliated with either party (including 3 percent who said they are not registered to vote). Overall, Hispanic voters in that poll planned to vote for Harris over Trump 57 percent to 38 percent, placing them around on par with Latino voters nationally.** (In comparison, white voters in Arizona split the other way, with 43 percent favoring Harris and 52 percent favoring Trump, according to a September poll from the same pollsters.) But while Harris and Democrats have the advantage, half in the poll of Hispanic voters feel the country is moving in the wrong direction, and a plurality, 35 percent, describe themselves as moderate, making them an important and possibly swingable bloc in the state in future elections.
Another smaller but notable group in Arizona is Mormons, who make up 5 percent of Arizona's population. While they have historically voted Republican, many have moved away from Trump's rebrand of the party. A few prominent Mormon Republican lawmakers from Arizona have taken anti-Trump stances, such as former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, who announced he will vote for Harris, and former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who rejected Trump's pleas to delay certification of Arizona's 2020 presidential election results and has said he will not vote for either presidential candidate.
The issues
Like the rest of the country, Arizonans rank inflation and the economy, immigration and abortion as the most important issues facing voters this election. But abortion may have special salience in the state.
Arizona voters will weigh in on 13 ballot measures in 2024, including Proposition 139, which provides for a state constitutional right to abortion. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, a territorial-era near-total abortion ban still on the books went into effect, setting up legal battles that culminated in the state's Supreme Court ruling in April that the law would stay in place. The next month, the state legislature overturned the older law, but banned most abortions after 15 weeks.
The proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall would allow abortions up to the point of viability, and later if doctors determine it necessary to preserve the life or health of the pregnant person.
Polls suggest this measure is popular and likely to pass. An average of polls of likely voters in Arizona from September and October shows that more are planning to vote yes (57 percent) on this amendment than no (31 percent). Interestingly, Hispanic voters are somewhat less favorable, with 52 percent supporting and 27 opposing. As is true nationwide, abortion may also be a motivating issue for many voters here: An average of 17 percent of Arizona voters across several recent polls named abortion as one of their top three issues. That's comparable to the 16 percent of registered voters who said the same nationally, according to an October GBAO/Fabrizio/Wall Street Journal poll. Arizonans generally favor increased protections for abortion access: 67 percent of Arizonans said abortion should be always or mostly legal in a Washington Post/Schar School poll from Sept. 30 to Oct. 15.
While abortion is top-of-mind for many Arizona voters this year, it is not surprising that immigration ranks even higher in this border state. Twenty-two percent of voters ranked it as their most important issue, in an average of recent polls.
And like abortion, immigration is also on the ballot this fall. Arizona voters will decide on changes to criminal and immigration law in the state when they vote on Proposition 314, which would make it a state crime to cross the border illegally into the state. Among other provisions, it would also make it a state crime to provide false documents with respect to employment or public benefits, and require agencies to check a recipient's legal status before providing benefits. Opponents say the proposal could lead to racial profiling and burden law enforcement. Two polls that asked about the proposal in late September and early October revealed that most likely Arizona voters (around 60 percent) are in favor of the amendment, while just over 20 percent were opposed.
Other recent polls have also asked Arizonans how they feel about the issue of immigration. A UMD Program for Public Consultation poll from Sept. 23 to Oct. 1 asked Arizonans about a slew of immigration policies. In that poll, a majority (60 percent) said they would prefer a "path to citizenship" over a "mass deportation" program to detain and deport most or all undocumented immigrants, while only 29 percent preferred the latter. (The rest preferred neither policy or did not answer). Arizonans also ranked immigration slightly higher than the other swing states as an important issue for the incoming presidential administration to address — with 91 percent saying it was important — according to a September Global Strategy Group/North Star Opinion Research poll.
Rounding out the top three of top issues in every recent poll we averaged is inflation and the economy, with an average of 28 percent of Arizonans saying it was their top issue. When asked who would do a better job handling the economy in an October New York Times/Siena College poll, 56 percent of likely Arizona voters chose Trump over Harris's 41 percent.
The downballot races
In addition to its slew of ballot measures, Arizona is home to a key Senate race this fall, since Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema decided not to seek reelection. The race pits Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego against Republican Kari Lake, a well-known Trump favorite who lost a gubernatorial run to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2022. Lake is a 2020 election denier who also unsuccessfully challenged her own 2022 loss three times.
538's latest polling average of this race gives Gallego a 7-point lead, meaning that he's running more than 8 points ahead of Harris. Gallego, who is of Colombian and Mexican descent, performed particularly well among Latinos in the Suffolk University/USA Today poll, pulling ahead of Lake 54 percent to 29 percent. An October Marist poll of Arizonans showed a 13-point drop in Lake's net favorability between September 2022 (-3 points net favorability) and October 2024 (-16 points).
Meanwhile in the House, two Republican congressmen, Rep. David Schweikert and Rep. Juan Ciscomani, are fighting to keep their seats in close races in Arizona's 1st and 6th Districts, respectively. A poll commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and conducted by Impact Research in early August found Schweikert's Democratic challenger, Amish Shah, tied with him, and another partisan sponsor, HMP Polling, found essentially the same result in September. The most recent polling from the 6th District from Change Research in July found Democrat Kirsten Engel slightly leading Ciscomani, 44 percent to 43 percent. 538's forecast gives both incumbents a slight edge, rating each race "lean Republican."
Mary Radcliffe contributed research.
Footnotes
*All numbers in this article are as of Oct. 24 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern.
**Based on polls of likely and registered voters only (if a poll included results among both populations, we used likely voters). If a poll included both a head-to-head matchup between Harris and Trump and a version including third parties, we used the head-to-head version. Crosstabs among groups defined by pollsters as "Latino" and "Hispanic" are both included in averages of Hispanic voters. Finally, if a polling organization (defined as a partnership between a pollster and sponsor, or a pollster alone if their work was not sponsored by an outside group) had more than one survey in the relevant time frame, only the most recent version was included. All polls conducted and released between Sept. 24 and Oct. 24 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern are included.
