Swing state guides: Arizona

Harris bets on winning over former Republicans

Between now and election day, I’m going to be publishing swing state guides roughly once a week. The posts are designed to be digestible guides to understanding the political geography and demographics of each swing state, and I guarantee that they’ll make you the most informed person at your watch party on election night.

Most swing state guides are and will only be available to paid subscribers. But between now and election day, there’s a 15% discount to all annual subscriptions - so sign up now to lock in a low price and be able to access all of the guides between now and the election. You can also check out the guide to Nevada, guide to North Carolina (free to read), guide to Nebraska’s 2nd district (free to read), guide to Georgia, guide to Michigan, and guide to Wisconsin. The guide to all-important Pennsylvania is coming up next Tuesday.

Arizona is a state in the American Southwest which is a fairly new entrant in the roster of swing states. Republicans won it in every single election from 1952 to 2016, with the exception of 1996. Joe Biden’s minuscule victory of 0.3% in the state in 2020 was just icing on the cake for him, because he already had an Electoral College majority. But it’s plausible this time around that Kamala Harris might need Arizona’s 11 Electoral College votes to make up for losing Wisconsin, which in some polling is closer than Pennsylvania. But right now Arizona looks like one of the best swing states for Trump - he leads by between 1.5 and 2%.

So what does Harris need to do to win?

Arizona politics is dominated by Maricopa County, which contains the city of Phoenix. Phoenix is, quite frankly, an abomination. It’s the fastest growing city in America, situated in a valley in which average daytime temperatures in the summer are north of forty degrees celsius. Without air conditioning, Phoenix couldn’t exist, and homeless people routinely die from heat exposure or get serious burns from the asphalt. It’s also one of the craziest hothouses in contemporary U.S. politics - the Western home of MAGA and 2020 election denial and the epicenter of national fights over abortion and immigration from Mexico, which borders the state to the south.

Maricopa County outlined on a map of Arizona. The Phoenix metro area is home to about five million people in a state of about seven million.

All of these factors make the politics of Arizona different to those of the Midwestern swing states. This isn’t a place dealing with deindustrialization and decline, but rather with the social, cultural and economic dislocation caused by rapid growth.