President-elect Donald Trump made gains in all four of Arizona’s border counties on his way back to the White House, improving the most in areas dominated by Hispanic voters compared to 2020.
Trump saw his best result in Yuma County, the largest majority-Hispanic county in Arizona, according to an analysis of 2020 and 2024 election results by The Arizona Republic.
“It was in the works for quite some time,” said Yuma businessman David Lara, whose county has been moving to the right for almost a decade. “You can only lie for so long to the Hispanic community, especially border communities.”
Trump, who in 2020 lost Arizona to President Joe Biden, grew his support by about 11 percentage points in ruby red Yuma County, which runs for more than 100 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border. He also improved in the blue border counties, where Vice President Kamala Harris underperformed Biden.
The border county shift is part of a larger national trend. Trump swept every battleground state and won the national popular vote last week, a major comeback that was fueled in part by Hispanic voters casting ballots for the GOP.
But no region on the battleground map is more affected by Trump’s immigration promises than southern Arizona, home to both the busiest border sector in the nation and the country’s most fortified stretch of border wall.
Trump ran a hardline campaign on immigration. He promised to carry out mass deportations, seal the southern border and even seek the death penalty for migrants who kill American citizens, all while painting Harris as an overly liberal “border czar.”
“Latino men in our communities were looking for somebody who was projecting a stronger image of America,” said Democratic Santa Cruz County Supervisor Bruce Bracker.
Harris carried Bracker’s solidly blue county, but Trump’s percentage of the vote went up by nearly nine points from 2020 to 2024. It was his second-largest improvement among the Arizona border counties.
Latino voters turn out for Trump in Yuma County
When it comes to Trump’s gains with Hispanic voters, no county tells a clearer story than Yuma.
Trump made an about 10 percentage point gain Yuma County this year, increasing his margin significantly from 2020. Trump won 64.7% of the vote in Yuma County last week, a notable increase from his 53.1% of support in 2020.
Yuma County has been trending toward Republicans for years. Trump narrowly won the county over Hillary Clinton in 2016 with 50.6% of the vote.
Trump flexed his Yuma County support on the Republican National Convention stage in July, inviting Lara to endorse him at the party gathering in Milwaukee.
Lara spoke about how the Biden administration’s “border crisis” has impacted his hometown of San Luis, located 25 miles south of Yuma.
“Imagine being treated as second-class citizens as chaos and crime overwhelm your streets,” Lara told the crowd in Milwaukee. “I don’t have to imagine this. I’ve watched it with my own eyes. I’ve seen my town suffer because Biden and Kamala Harris want the illegal immigration crisis to continue.”
Lara blasted the Biden administration for what he described as its lack of action in border communities like San Luis and predicted the Latino turnout for the MAGA movement.
“Los Latinos estamos con Trump,” he said.
Yuma County has a population of more than 200,000 residents, of which nearly 65 percent identify as Hispanic, according to Census data. The language most commonly spoken at home in the county is not English, with more than half of households primarily speaking Spanish.
The county also has a higher share of people born outside of the U.S. — more than one in four residents, according to 2023 Census Bureau estimates — than the rest of the state.
Trump won most of the precincts in Yuma County, according to an analysis of election results by The Republic. But the precincts with the largest share of Hispanic voters chose Harris.
“It’s really simple,” Lara told The Republic in an interview about why his community voted for Trump this election. “It’s the economy, freedom of speech, less government, (getting) out of wars and safe and secure communities.”
Lara said that the cost of filling up at the gas pump has increased from Trump’s first administration along with other goods. He criticized outsourcing practices that enable large corporations to make “big money,” arguing that they take job opportunities from American workers.
However, he does not believe that trade with Mexico should completely halt, noting the importance of binational trade in border communities.
“We just can’t close the borders. We do have to have products coming in. Products that we don’t have are the ones that should come in,” Lara added.
Lara believes that the exodus of Latino voters from the Democratic party seen in this election also has to do with the community no longer trusting Democrats to run the country.
“It’s the same story from the Democratic Party: ‘We’re poor. They’re taking advantage of us. We’re innocent. White people are taking advantage of us. We’re poor because they’re rich.’ Always portraying us as victims, as vulnerable, as weak, as ignorant,” Lara said. “The community found out finally that it was false.”
Trump gains in blue counties
Even in the blue counties along Arizona’s southern border, Trump improved on his 2020 performance against Biden.
Santa Cruz County, which shares a border with Mexico for over 50 miles, ultimately voted for Harris. But the vice president’s margin shrunk considerably there compared to Biden’s 2020 victory.
The GOP’s presidential election margin in Santa Cruz County grew by 8.7 percentage points from 2020 to 2024. Trump received about 41% of the vote in 2024, increasing from the 32.9% of support he received against Biden.
The county has a total population of nearly 48,000 people, of which more than 80% are reportedly Hispanic, according to Census data.
Nogales Mayor Jorge Maldonado said turnout in his border city was surprisingly high. He attributed some of Trump’s popularity among young men to stimulus checks the Trump administration sent to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People are going to vote the way they want,” Maldonado said, adding that he’s concerned Trump’s tariff policy could hurt the produce industry that operates on either side of the border.
Pima County, the second largest populated county in Arizona with more than one million residents, had the smallest shift rightward of Arizona’s four border counties.
The county’s seat, Tucson, has been a reliable Democratic stronghold for decades, in large part because of the Latino vote. Hispanic people comprise more than 35% of the population in Pima County, according to Census data.
Trump visited Tucson for a rally during the 2024 campaign. Harris did not, although she sent campaign surrogates there.
Cochise County a campaign backdrop
On the day that Harris accepted her party’s presidential nomination, Trump went straight to Arizona’s southern border.
Trump stood beside an unfinished portion of the border wall in Cochise County and spoke for nearly two hours in the sweltering heat while Democrats gathered for their convention some 1,700 miles away in Chicago.
He told gruesome stories of migrant crime and hammered his new opponent on her biggest border state vulnerability: Illegal immigration soared during the Biden era, and the president had tasked Harris with addressing its root causes.
Harris would take her own border trip to Cochise County before the race was over, promising to shift rightward in a border security speech and working to shed the “border czar” label that Republicans used at every turn.
But Harris’s visit to Douglas, where the Biden administration invested $400 million to modernize the local port of entry, did not sway voters there. Neither did a drop in migrant encounters at the border this summer after Biden signed an executive order curtailing asylum.
Even in a reliably Republican region such as Cochise County, Trump found fertile ground to grow his margins.
Trump was on track to win two-thirds of the vote in Cochise County, according to partial election results available on Monday. Four years ago, Trump received 60% there.
“Cochise County and the rest of them along the border broke the same way the rest of the country did,” said Bisbee Mayor Ken Budge, who endorsed Harris. “He got many more Hispanic votes than he did before, and it’s no surprise to me that we aren’t that much different than the rest of the country.”
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Publish date : 2024-11-12 05:57:00
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