On Saturday night, The Associated Press called Arizona for Donald Trump in the presidential election, securing his sweep of all seven battleground states and winning with 312 Electoral College votes.
In 2020, Joe Biden narrowly won Arizona by just over 10,000 votes, becoming the second Democrat to win the state since the 1940s (the other being Bill Clinton in 1992). But this year, Trump made ground in Democratic strongholds and increased his margins in counties he won in 2020.
Newsweek has created two maps to show which counties flipped from Democrat to Republican on Tuesday.
A review of the 2024 results show that Trump flipped or expanded his lead in several crucial counties. Arizona’s most populous county Maricopa, which includes Phoenix, shifted decisively back to Trump, who, with 89 percent of votes counted, is leading by 4 points over Kamala Harris. Biden won Maricopa by 2 points in 2020.
Trump made gains in all four of the Arizona counties which border Mexico compared to 2020, suggesting his campaign message focusing on illegal immigration resonated with the people that live there. In Santa Cruz, a Democratic stronghold on the border, moved toward Trump in 2024. Harris won Santa Cruz by a 19-point margin compared to Biden’s 35-point margin in 2020.
Matt York/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The state also passed Proposition 314, a state-level measure which granted local authorities the power to enforce immigration laws, further suggesting that immigration played a role in Trump’s victory. Its passing suggests Arizona agrees with Trump on the need for stricter immigration policies.
Harris did retain Democratic control in counties such as Pima, home to Tucson, where she leads by a comfortable 16-point margin, and Coconino, where she leads by 20 points. However, her performance in these areas was weaker than Biden’s, who won them by 19 and 24 points respectively, and were insufficient to counter Trump’s strength across most of the rest of the state.
In northern Arizona, Trump maintained control over traditionally Republican counties. He won Mohave County by 56 points, Yavapai County by 35 points, and Gila County by 38 points, with over 95 percent of ballots counted in each. This solidified his support across the state’s rural regions, which have formed a core part of his coalition since 2016.
Arizona also has a large percentage of Latino voters, with Latino people accounting for 30 percent of the state’s population according to the 2020 census. National trends show that more Latinos voted for Trump in 2024 than in 2020.
Despite winning a larger proportion of the Hispanic/Latino vote than Trump, Harris lost ground compared to Biden’s win in 2020, and only secured 6 percentage points more support than Trump did, according to a CNN exit poll.
