Arizona may be known for its aversion to daylight savings time, but its truly unique character is exemplified by its high population of swing voters, focus on immigration, and 11,000-vote margin in the 2020 presidential election. Arizona is the epitome of a swing state — one of seven expected to decide the upcoming election. Republican candidates have claimed its electoral votes for 16 out of the last 18 cycles, but in recent years, Arizona has shifted more blue. Joe Biden won the state in 2020, and it is currently represented by two liberal senators: Democrat Mark Kelly, and independent Kyrsten Sinema.
Yet, while both of the states’ senators caucus with the Democrats, their respective wins cannot be solely attributed to their liberal policies. Crucial to Kelly’s win was support from top Republicans in the state, the extreme unpopularity of his opponent, and his intentional distance from the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Arizonans consistently rank immigration as their main concern, with 31% indicating it to be the most important issue to them, and 52% stating that recent immigration crises have “made their life worse.”
Kelly and Sinema have made immigration reform a key facet of their winning platforms. Sinema specifically advocates for “swift justice,” fast-tracking those who are eligible for asylum and deporting those who are not. Kelly has stated on many occasions that he regards illegal immigration as a “national security issue.” Both are advocates for greater border security within the Senate.
Historically, support for stricter immigration is associated with conservative ideologies. Despite this, Arizona voted for President Biden, a Democrat who lessened immigration restrictions put in place by former president Trump.
Biden’s seemingly-unlikely 2020 victory in Arizona becomes clearer when the variety of demographic changes in the state’s electorate are taken into account. First, the Arizona election featured a historically high 550,000 Latino voters, meaning one-in-four Arizonan voters identified as Latino. This demographic tends to vote Democratic: exit polls showed that 61% of Latino voters chose Biden over Trump.
There were also more registered Democrats than Republicans in Arizona in 2020. 43.5% of Arizona voters were registered Democrats, versus 33.6% registered as Republicans. This Democratic advantage was a dramatic change from 2016, when Republicans outpaced Democrats in registration by 2.6 percentage points. Interestingly, though, it was Arizona’s 1.4 million independents that primarily drove Biden’s win. This unaffiliated group, which temporarily made up the largest party of voters in Arizona, is responsible for the majority of the “swing” of the state. Since Biden’s win, the number of registered Republican voters in Arizona has grown by six percentage points, with a surge in voters registering as Republican after Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination for president. This is troubling news for Harris, who must cannot afford to lose crucial support in a state that was previously decided by a margin of 11,000 votes.
Faced with a slimming margin in Arizona, and aware of the state’s disapproval of Biden, Harris has followed suit with Kelly and Sinema and hardened her rhetoric on immigration. In the past, Democrats have advocated for reducing deportations, expanding asylum eligibility, and offering more accessible pathways to citizenship. Harris’s platform however, is centered around passing the Bipartisan Border Security Package, a product of a compromise between Senate Democrats and Republicans that raises restrictions on asylum eligibility, authorizes emergency measures to stop illegal border crossings, and allows for an increased number of deportations. Her endorsement of the bill — which failed due to former President Trump instructing Republicans to vote against it — signals a drastic departure from Democrats’s standard conscientious approach to immigration.
Trump, on the other hand, has focused on plans involving mass deportations, an agenda supported by 53% of Arizona voters. He’s promised to employ a multitude of hard-line policies if elected, including deporting 11 million migrants, ending birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, constructing a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and reinstating Title 42, a public health emergency status used to expel migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum.
Polling from The Center for the Future of Arizona indicates that 56% of voters strongly agree with Harris that comprehensive reform of the immigration system, including establishing streamlined paths to citizenship, is needed. However, another poll from Noble Predictive Insights found that 63% of Arizona voters also support Proposition 314, a state ballot initiative that criminalizes all non-citizen entries into the state and aligns closely with Trump’s proposed national policies.
Examined through the lense of immigration, it appears that Arizonans have begun to lean red again. This trend aligns with what statewide polls are indicating: in Five-Thirty-Eight’s poll aggregator, Trump leads the state by two percentage points. As both parties scramble to win Arizona’s 11 electoral votes, all eyes will be on the 1.4 million independents in the Grand Canyon state — and the strong possibility that this entire election may come down to their thoughts about the border.
