Democrats found success for the first time in a generation when they won Arizona at the presidential level in 2020.
It was a close victory – 10,457 votes – that, on the surface, would appear to be potentially repeatable by Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
But changes in voter registration in the four years since could impact that slim margin and influence the outcome of the election between Harris and former President Donald Trump this fall.
“Republicans continued to maintain their numerical dominance over Democrats, despite the fact that Republican candidates lost large portions of their elections,” said Samara Klar, a professor at the University’s School of Government and Public Policy. University of Arizona, which studies political attitudes and behavior. .
There are about 4.3 million registered voters in Arizona heading into the 2024 election, a 6% increase from just before the 2020 election. This growth pales in comparison to the jump between 2016 and 2020, when rolls grew 23%, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of voter registration data.
The Republic’s analysis is drawn from election data collected by L2, a research company that compiles demographic information on registered voters across the country.
Republicans have registration advantage
The Arizona Democratic Party is losing ground, Republicans are holding steady and a growing share of voters are registering without party affiliation.
Kamala Harris did not change this dynamic when she became the Democratic presidential nominee. In fact, after Harris’ nomination, more Republicans registered to vote than Democrats.
Harris also failed to encourage more women than usual to register, making the overturning of Roe v. Wade the only event in recent history that created a brief surge in enrollment among Arizona women.
The Republicans’ advantage over Democrats has grown since 2020, putting the party at roughly the same level as in 2016, when Trump was elected. While the Republican Party has retained about 35% of all registered voters, Democrats have fallen from 33% in 2020 to 29% today.
Nonpartisan registration increased from about 25% to 29%.
That’s good news for Trump, who lost the 2020 election by less than a percentage point in Arizona.
A sharp shift like this “in favor of Republicans in voter registration represents a huge difference in terms of the makeup of the electorate this year,” said Jeff Glassburner, a pollster at Peak Insights who has worked on campaigns. of the GOP in Arizona.
The Democratic voter registration deficit is a worrying trend for those on the left, including Democratic political strategist Stacy Pearson. This comes even as Democrats won both Senate seats, the governor’s office, the attorney general’s office and the secretary of state’s office during the Trump era.
“I literally wake up at 3 a.m. trying to figure out: Are these people just frustrated with the two-party system and registered as independents? Are these disgruntled Democrats who left California and registered as independents? » Pearson said.
As fewer new voters registered as Democrats, more existing Democrats dropped their party affiliation than Republicans, according to an analysis of Arizona Republic voter registration data.
About 136,000 Democrats dropped their party affiliation, compared to 103,000 Republicans who did the same. Many of them simply became nonpartisan: about 84,000 Democrats and 67,000 Republicans did so.
But since the election of President Joe Biden, 37,000 Democrats have changed their Republican party affiliation, while only about 19,000 Republicans have become Democrats.
With Democrats at a partisan disadvantage, Harris needs to focus on people registering without party affiliation, Pearson said. The vice president is working to woo them and Republicans who are fed up with Trump, highlighting Republican supporters like former Sen. Jeff Flake and building a coalition within the Mormon Church.
“The math is the math, and for Democrats to be successful statewide, there needs to be a greater proportion of independents voting for Democrats to cover that loss,” Pearson said.
Republicans attribute their partisan advantage in part to Biden’s unpopularity there. The Democratic president was trailing Trump in polls in Arizona and across the country before dropping out of the race, with voters saying they were wary of his age and frustrated with the state of the economy and the inflation.
“The Republican registration advantage is likely a counterbalance to Biden’s unpopular numbers,” said Chad Heywood, the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. “Whenever you look at the incumbent president, you usually notice a reaction to voter sentiment that you see in the registration data.”
Generation Z prepares to vote for the first time
More than 187,000 young people are registered on the electoral lists for their first presidential election, according to an analysis by République.
That’s about 37,000 fewer newcomers than during the 2020 presidential election.
Arizona polls show Harris outperforming Trump among voters in that age group.
“Voters under 30 are voting for Harris in higher proportions than for Trump. It only increases as you get younger, especially younger women,” Klar said. “Younger women are particularly likely to support Harris, but they are largely independent.”
Independent voters in Arizona tend to be younger and include more Hispanic voters, Klar said. This could be due to voters’ feeling of distance from the major parties and the polarization of the political moment.
“If you’re 18 and you don’t feel like any party represents you, you’re much more likely to simply identify as independent and perhaps vote for the candidate who best represents your views” , Klar said.
The share of Hispanic voters continues to grow
Hispanic voters are steadily increasing, according to an Arizona Republic analysis. The group represented only 18.5% of registered voters in 2016. That percentage increased to 20% in 2020 and now stands at 21.6% in 2024. There has been no notable change among registered Blacks on the electoral rolls in Arizona.
Harris leads Trump among Hispanic voters, but a recent New York Times and Siena College poll found that the vice president has lost some support among that group over the past month.
“If you look at national trends, Republicans have performed better in the last two election cycles with Hispanic voters, and so I don’t know if that’s a boon for Democrats like it might have been in the past,” Heywood said.
Indeed, Democrats are losing ground among Hispanics, just as they are with the rest of the population. One in three voters who switched from Democrat to Republican from 2020 to today were Hispanic.
In 2020, 47% of Hispanic voters were registered Democrats, compared to 16% of registered Republicans.
Today, only 40% of Hispanic voters are registered Democrats, while 18% are registered Republicans.
Nonpartisan affiliation has become more popular: in 2020, 31% were nonpartisan and today 37% are.
Enrique Davis Mazlum, Arizona director of the Latino political group UnidosUS Action Fund, noted that Hispanic voters make up a young voting bloc in the state.
“It’s a very young group of voters,” Mazlum said. “A very large portion of Latinos will be voting for the first time.”
Don’t blame California transplants
Arizona’s population has grown significantly over the past decade, and Phoenix is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. But the impact of voters moving to Arizona from other states may be exaggerated, Klar said.
Arizona didn’t grow enough to gain another congressional seat in the last redistricting, for example. And when Klar surveys the state, she asks voters when they moved here.
“It’s a popular theory that it’s all these newcomers who are changing the political landscape of the state. I actually don’t see much evidence that it has to do with newcomers,” Klar said.
“A bigger factor is the changes within Arizona,” Klar said. “Political leanings have more to do with who lives in Arizona than who moves here.
The state’s red and rural counties are losing population as more people concentrate in suburban Phoenix and Maricopa County in general, according to Klar.
Maricopa County is the most populous county in Arizona. He represents about 60% of registered voters in Arizona. The county has nearly 2.6 million registered voters. The partisan makeup of the county’s voters is 35% Republican, 32% independent, and 29% Democratic.
The state Republican and Democratic party chairmen each declined interviews about the changing voter registration landscape. Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda said “our momentum is undeniable” in a written statement, although unaffiliated voters outpaced both parties.
“Arizona Republicans have registered more than Democrats since 2020, and we’re not slowing down,” Swoboda said.