Hillary Clinton will campaign in Phoenix on Nov. 2, a move that suggests the Democratic nominee and her team are increasingly confident that they will be rewarded on Election Day for their efforts in traditionally red states.
“Clinton will lay out what is at stake in the election. With more people voting in this election than any in history, Clinton will urge Arizona voters to take advantage of in-person early voting,” her campaign announced Friday.
The Democratic nominee leads her opponent, Donald Trump, by 1.5 points in Arizona, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
A number of political analysts have predicted Democratic-leaning Hispanics will turn out in numbers great enough to hand the Grand Canyon State to Clinton on Nov. 8.
The Democratic nominee leads Trump nationwide with Hispanic likely voters by more than 50 points, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey released on Oct. 17.
In a four-way race that includes Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, Clinton leads against Trump with likely Hispanic voters 67 percent to 17 percent. When it is just Clinton and Trump, the Democratic nominee bests the Republican candidate with Latinos who are likely to vote by 70 percent to 17 percent.
And when it comes to Arizona, the Latino vote is nothing to be ignored.
The state’s Hispanic population numbers at around 2.1 million, making it the sixth largest concentration of Latinos in the nation, according to the Pew Research Center. Of those millions in Arizona, 992,000 are eligible voters, meaning the state has the “fifth largest Hispanic statewide eligible voter population nationally,” Pew noted.
Put another way, 22 percent of Arizona eligible voters are Hispanic.
Hispanics also vote, according to turnout estimates in past elections.
“In the 2010 and 2014 midterm election, Latinos represented 12% of all votes cast statewide. In the 2012 Presidential Election, Latinos were a record 17% of all voters in Arizona,” according to the non-profit Latino voter registration group One Arizona.
The Clinton campaign certainly appears to be bullish about its chances in Arizona as it has deployed millions of dollars and campaign assets recently to the traditionally deep-red state.
“In Arizona, we are going to be expanding our television buy and dramatically expanding our direct mail and digital advertising programs by over $2 million,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters recently.
Along with ad buys, the Clinton campaign has also dispatched some of its tops surrogates to the area, including First Lady Michelle Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Chelsea Clinton.
“There are other states right now that are very close contests, but even if we manage to pull off a win [it] would not have that same symbolic significance” as Arizona, Clinton’s campaign press secretary, Brian Fallon, said. “I think that speaks to demographic changes in the country that are really upending the normal map.”
Arizona has gone red in nine out of the last 10 presidential elections. The last time that the Grand Canyon State voted to put a Democrat in the White House was in 1996 when it went blue for Bill Clinton.
