PHOENIX — No Democratic presidential candidate has won Arizona since 1996, and that was the only time it’s happened since Harry Truman nabbed it in 1948. But the party is packing an aggressive pitch to voters there this year, particularly in voter-rich Maricopa County.
Democrats have long had their eye on competing fiercely in Arizona, with its rising Latino community and former California residents who moved slightly east for the lower housing costs while continuing to reside in warm weather. And many traditional Arizona Republicans, in the Barry Goldwater and John McCain mold, aren’t fans of President Trump’s bellicose style and are ready to cross the aisle and back Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Democratic sights on Arizona began seriously in 2018, when then-Rep. Kyrsten Sinema won the state’s open Senate seat that cycle. Sinema was the first Democrat to win a Senate race there since Dennis DeConcini clinched his third and final six-year term in 1988. Sinema’s strength lied in Maricopa County, home of Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs. Roughly 60% of all likely voters in the state reside in that county alone.
Election forecasters say the state continues trending into the Democratic column. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved the state from the “toss-up” to the “lean Democrat” column earlier this month. A poll of voters in the state showed Biden leading Trump by 5 points at 45% support.
A RealClearPolitics average of the state has Biden leading by 5 points with 49.2% support.
Complications for Trump generally revolve around his bleeding of college-educated voters, something Republicans continue struggling with around the country. The campaign has also begun pulling advertising from the state, although Trump talked to supporters there earlier this month for a roundtable event in Phoenix, his fifth stop during the campaign. Vice President Mike Pence visited the state as well, meeting with supporters in Phoenix.
“The road to victory runs right through Arizona,” Pence said.
[Read more: Biden hoping demographic changes will help him seize Arizona from Trump]
To make up for the loss of college-educated whites, the Trump campaign has heavily pivoted to the Hispanic vote. Recent polling shows Trump having the potential to win a historic portion of that group in November, although some are skeptical as to whether those numbers will remain true on Election Day.
“Latinos need the free market, and the free market needs Latinos,” Pence said during his stop.
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, has pledged tens of millions dollars in advertising in the Phoenix market. During a virtual event, Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris gave her own pitch to Latino voters.
“We’re engaging community members like you, the people who run businesses all across Arizona … we know that you are the backbone of this state,” Harris said.
Trump won the state in 2016 with just over 48% of the vote, compared with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 44.58%. That margin of victory was almost a third lower than Mitt Romney’s in 2012, when he beat President Barack Obama in the state by 9.03% of the vote.
Despite the 2016 campaign, warning signs for the Trump campaign were in the open. Trump won Maricopa County with a 2.84% margin of victory, compared with Romney’s 10.69%. The last president to win the state with a lower margin of victory was Bill Clinton in 1996, with a 2.2% margin.
