Why Arizona Could Be The Next Florida
The case for another one ceasing to be in play for the army of darkness.
In forecasting, we have polling, traditional metrics, campaign insights, and my personal favorite - voter registration by party. There is another measuring stick out there I think I command with authority, and that is a gut sense of how things are going based on a combination of all of the above. When I examine the terrain for a state that appears poised to break out into the next GOP stronghold - I see the familiar profile of Arizona.
Arizona is completing the loop from McCain establishment to shy about Trump to “tried it and hated it” with regard to Democrats. Of course, you probably know by now I don’t find most 2018, 2020, or 2022 election outcomes in the state to be fairly decided, but that isn’t the point of this article. The 2022 result vaulted Katie Hobbs to the Governor’s Mansion. Here is how I describe Hobbs, who is entering the final year of her first, and hopefully last, term in my forthcoming book The American War on Election Corruption:
Ironically, Hobbs’s 2018 opponent, Republican Steve Gaynor, had been called the winner on Election Night, only to have that lead suspiciously slip away, vaulting Hobbs to the second-highest office in the state and her moment in the sun to rip off not only Arizona’s electoral votes in 2020, but its top office in the very next cycle. Even after a makeover, she was and is an uninspiring, uncharismatic, former state legislator who speaks to people of a conservative state as if they were residents of San Francisco, and despite propagandized polling, few expected her to stand a chance against Lake, who had a solid lead in the final average of polls, including one outlier from Fox 10 Phoenix/Insider Advantage with Lake up by 11, just a few points shy of Ducey’s blowout reelection margin from 2018. So uninspiring is Hobbs that most Arizonans couldn’t pick her out of a lineup three years after she hid from Kari Lake at every opportunity and was installed by a corrupt coalition of subversives to govern Arizona.
Arizona was once the most reliable GOP presidential state, and the only state in America not to back a Democrat from 1960 through 1980. It backed every GOP nominee from 1952 through 2016 except Dole, who was Perot’d, including Trump in 2016. Trump then set GOP records for net new votes gained both statewide and in Maricopa County, which even Dole won in that 1996 slip-up. The sudden change in the state’s temperament can be linked to the expansion of mail-in balloting, which now constitutes roughly three-quarters of all votes in the state. Notably, Maricopa and Pima Counties account for over three-quarters of the statewide vote, so it is easy for urban centers to override the rest of the state’s overwhelmingly Republican lean.
Still, a turnaround could be on the horizon, and here are the reasons why:
Reasons Why Arizona Could Become The Next Florida
I. Statewide Voter Registration
Arizona is almost a full 33,000 net registrations more Republican than it was in 2024, when Trump won the state by 5.5% - not by enough to get Kari Lake across the mail-in balloting safety net. The Republicans have almost doubled their lead since the 2022 midterms, which you can read about in my piece outlining Katie Hobbs’s grim prognosis for reelection.
Here is how Florida drifted for years with voter registration until Republicans finally broke through after 2020, and turned the state into a GOP stronghold before the 2024 election.
The shift in party registration was perfectly predictive of the direction of the margin shift each cycle. In 2024, Trump won by 13.1% on a voter registration index of R+7.5%.
II. Progress in Every County
All 15 counties shifted more Republican between 2020 and 2024 in Arizona, and all 15 shifted toward him in the results, including a flip of Maricopa County. All 15 counties are now redder (or less blue) than they were in November 2024:
III. Minority Votes
Trump dominated Miami-Dade County in 2024, a key GOP bellwether for national victories, won Osceola County, which is heavily Puerto Rican, and nearly flipped Palm Beach County. In Texas, he won the Hispanic vote by 10 points. In Arizona, he made major progress with Latino and Native American voters as evidenced by his progress in the following counties:
Heavily Latino
Santa Cruz Biden +35.5% to Harris +18.6%
Yuma Trump +6.2% to Trump +20.4%
Heavily Native American
Apache Biden +33.6% to Harris +18.9%
Navajo Trump +8.2% to Trump +17.2%
What Has to Happen
The key ingredient to Florida’s 2022 and 2024 GOP landslides, aside from the organic shifting of Latino voters away from Democrats, is Governor DeSantis’s signature on Senate Bill 524. From The American War on Election Corruption:
In 2022, Governor DeSantis signed Senate Bill 524, banning ballot harvesting and instituting other measures to secure Florida’s elections, which were corrupt enough as late as 2018 to nearly keep him out of office altogether. The passage of this bill, naturally, required Republican dominance of state government, which is lacking in the deep blue states in which ballot harvesting is both a way of life and a pathway to one-party electoral dominance. Florida’s legislature used precedent from its urban areas, particularly those in South Florida, stretching back decades to bolster public support for the measures, and at once, Florida became an overwhelmingly Republican state, first in the 2022 midterms and then again in 2024 for a presidential race.
The same signs suggesting Florida was about to lurch into blowout territory for Republicans are present in Arizona. I can’t speak for Karrin Taylor Robson, but I have it on good authority that Andy Biggs is prepared to sign legislation, promoted by the likes of Rep. Rachel Keshel and her colleagues, requiring address verification for mail-in ballots and the speedier counts that will restore trust where it has been completely eradicated.
Everyone is looking at the U.S. House races next year, and rightfully so; however, Arizona’s statewide races are some of the most important in the country required to wrest a state from the grips of the most vindictive Democrats you’ll find anywhere. To steal a line from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign - unemployment only needs to go up by one for this to happen, and for Arizona to blossom into a red bastion:
Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.
I live in Pima, last vestiges of old dems.. in Green Valley very liberal of so, great to know it is shifting! Hobbs is a slimy cartel bought snake
Outstanding analysis, as always.