Trump Secures Arizona’s 11 Electoral Votes
President-elect Donald J. Trump has officially claimed victory in Arizona, securing its 11 electoral votes, as reported by The Associated Press on Saturday night. This win marks yet another significant achievement for Trump, bringing his total Electoral College tally to 312. With this victory, he has successfully flipped all seven of this year’s critical battleground states.
Trump’s triumph over Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona signifies a return to the state’s historically conservative roots. Arizona has only voted for a Democrat twice since the 1940s, including in 2020 when Joseph R. Biden Jr. managed to win by a narrow margin of just over 10,000 votes. This year, however, Democrats faced an uphill struggle from the outset in Arizona, a border state where residents expressed growing frustration over the ongoing migrant crisis and deep-seated economic anxieties related to high housing costs and rising prices for everyday necessities such as groceries and gasoline.
On Tuesday, near a polling location in Guadalupe, Arizona, the atmosphere was charged with anticipation as voters made their way to cast their ballots.
Given that Republicans outnumber Democrats in the state, Vice President Harris needed to appeal to a substantial number of Arizona’s independents and moderate Republicans. There were indications that she might have made inroads, particularly among independent voters, including white women in the Phoenix suburbs, who had been leaning more towards the left. Democrats were optimistic that issues such as reproductive rights could galvanize these voters and help prevent Trump from securing another term.
However, it was Trump who forged a successful coalition, maintaining the allegiance of a significant portion of the state’s Republican base while also attracting enough independent voters. Polling had suggested that he was making notable gains among Latino voters, a rapidly expanding and crucial demographic in Arizona that Democrats had counted on as part of their electoral coalition.
While Harris appeared to have established a robust ground operation in Arizona, with her campaign and allied organizations, including various unions, effectively mobilizing to canvass neighborhoods and drive voter turnout, Trump’s strategy leaned heavily on external committees to perform similar tasks—a relatively untested approach for Republicans.
Nevertheless, conservative groups such as Turning Point seemed well-prepared, actively knocking on doors throughout the summer and fall, and encouraging less frequent conservative voters to submit their ballots early. This represented a marked shift from 2020 when Trump openly criticized early voting. With the early voting statistics in Arizona this year looking promising for Republicans, they hoped these efforts would be sufficient to counter any late-game surge from Democratic supporters.
