Since 1952, no state has voted Republican for president more than Arizona. Bill Clinton’s narrow 1996 victory, which featured a strong showing by Ross Perot, is the only time the Republicans didn’t carry the state. Arizona had two different Republican nominees since 1964 (Barry Goldwater and John McCain), which ties it with California as the only state to have more than one Republican nominee (we’re counting Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as Californians).
Since 1952, Arizona has been at least 5.6 points more Republican than the country:
Streaks end though. Aaron Kleinman, a political analyst and researcher, came up with the Disco Stu fallacy.” The Simpsons character looked at 1976 record sales and projected that because disco records were up 400% in 1976, then if that trend continued, disco sales would be insane by the early 1980’s. That obviously didn’t happen. As he also notes, Missouri used to be a bellwether state, now it’s reliably Republican. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted Democratic in every election from 1992-2012, then they all flipped to the GOP. Arizona could follow a similar path; once reliably Republican, it might join Nevada and New Mexico as Democratic states.
Democrats’ strong chance to flip Arizona is because of their strength in Maricopa County. It’s the greater Phoenix area and the nation’s fourth largest county. Over half of Arizona’s votes are cast there. After giving Mitt Romney a 10.6 point victory in 2012, Trump won the county by just 2.9 points in 2016. In 2018, the Democrats won the county in the senate election by 3.2 points, which nearly matched their 3.7 point statewide victory. That county has shifted 13.8 points in six years.
Trump’s Republican Party doesn’t run well in Maricopa County. The county is now 1/3 Latino, per the Census. It’s more educated than the rests of the state too. Both those categories have been worse for Trump than they were for the McCain-Romney GOP. And Maricopa County keeps growing—by 17.5% from 2010-2018. Per data provided to me by Kleinman, he projects Biden to win the county by four points this November.
Arizona has been one of the most accurately polled states. In the last three cycles, the final result in the main race has been within 3.3 points in both 538 and the RealClearPolitics average. In 2012, Romney ran 1.6 points ahead of his final RCP average and Trump ran .5 points worse than the final average. And in 538’s final projection, they were off by 2.2 points in 2016 and .6 points in 2018.
Biden has a large lead in Arizona polling and modeling. Since the virus took off in March, Biden has led every day in the RCP average. He leads by 4.4 points in the Economist model and 4.1 in 538’s current polling average.
If Biden wins Arizona, he can win the presidency by winning back Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine’s 2nd Congressional District (which might be the most likely district to flip):
He could also win Florida, and it would be over without Biden having to win Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania or North Carolina:
For all the talk that Trump has a giant electoral college edge, he starts running into a narrow path to winning a second term with a loss in Arizona. And with less than two months until the election, Biden has a solid lead in The Grand Canyon State.
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