Katie Hobbs vows to secure the border with Trump administration
Gov. Katie Hobbs traveled to the border and addressed its security, saying that it is a nonpartisan issue.
Corrections & Clarifications: Some comparisons between 2020 and 2024 voting results used in a previous version of the article were incorrect. The article has been updated and the data points corrected.
President-elect Donald Trump surged in popularity across Arizona this year, but much of his new support didn’t come from GOP strongholds.
Trump saw the largest gains in the state’s two most Democratic congressional districts, according to an analysis of election results by The Arizona Republic.
Between 2020 and 2024, voters in the Phoenix-area 3rd Congressional District and Tucson-area 7th Congressional District swung toward Trump by more than five points, the data shows. That’s about twice as much as the rest of Arizona.
Those are by far the most Democratic districts in the state, and they are the only two districts with more than half Hispanic populations, according to census data.
The nation decisively chose the GOP in November’s elections. All 50 states in the country shifted toward Trump, helping him lock down Arizona and the other six “swing states” that were thought to be competitive this year. Trump became more popular among virtually all voting demographics, with few exceptions.
In Arizona, Trump locked in Republican victories in all of the state’s six GOP-leaning or competitive congressional districts.
That helped set up Republicans to assume total control over the federal government including the presidency, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House, paving the way for Trump to implement his “America First” agenda with minimal pushback from Democrats.
Trump’s gains among working class, Hispanic, and Native voters was reflected in Arizona, too. The former president saw a nearly four-point gain in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, a rural area home to a large population of Native voters.
He gained around two points in Arizona’s bellwether 1st Congressional District, which is home to many of the suburbs in wealthy Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. That district narrowly chose President Joe Biden in 2020, but this year voted for Trump by a 51% to 48% margin.
The only district that did not see a dramatic shift to the right was the 6th Congressional District, which includes much of southeastern Arizona and a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. That district, home to much of bright-blue Pima County, inched toward the GOP by less than a percentage point in the presidential race this year.
Political observers have noted that incumbent governments around the world fared poorly in the wake of the pandemic. Many chalked up the election results to a nationwide appetite for change.
“The economic headwinds faced by Biden, and then Harris, were just too much,” said Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist based in Arizona.
Some GOP candidates modestly trail Trump
Republican candidates further down the ballot benefited from the “red wave” that swept the country, but not all of them performed as well as Trump.
U.S. Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., easily fended off a challenge from former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez. Still Trump outperformed Crane by about 2.5 percentage points in his northeastern Arizona district, the data shows.
That election result was nearly identical to 2022, when Crane was a political newcomer up against well-resourced incumbent U.S. Rep. Tom O’Halleran.
Political insiders saw Nez as a strong candidate, though his odds of winning were slim.
Likewise, Republican Rep.-elect Abe Hamadeh, an attorney and ally of the unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, coasted to victory in his West Valley-area district. But he trailed Trump by around one point.
U.S. Rep. David Schweikert, by contrast, overperformed Trump by about a point in the battleground 1st District.
Paul Bentz, a GOP pollster, noted that Trump’s performance tends to stand out from other Republican candidates.
“It’s hard to measure against Trump, because he’s such a unique force,” he said.
Trump’s coattails didn’t extend to Lake, for example, one of the few Arizona Republicans in competitive federal races to lose her election this year.
By Bentz’s accounting, the Republican candidates running for office in Maricopa County received more votes than Lake, even though more than 100,000 voters skipped those down-ballot and lower-profile races.
“That speaks volumes,” Bentz said.
“I’m not sure if we would call Arizona voters discerning or schizophrenic,” Marson said of the ticket-splitting. “Donald Trump is a unique individual.”
Both Schweikert and Ciscomani won with larger margins of victory than they did in 2022, the year that GOP-led restrictions on abortion and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were thought to drive turnout among Democrats.
Trump’s presence on the ballot “helped bring these candidates across the finish line,” Bentz said.
Republic reporter Caitlin McGlade contributed to this article.
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Publish date : 2024-11-26 01:23:00
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