What a 1% Trump Win in Arizona Looks Like, County by County

Topic: 2024 Election Forecast

Donald Trump is going to have to win a quasi-election this year.  It’s a fact, and you don’t have to like it.  Part of what makes it a quasi-election is that all effort is being undertaken to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House by every bad actor under the sun; another thing that makes it a quasi-election is the simple fact that legislatures, including Republican ones, have passed stupid laws that allow for stupid election returns enabled by widespread corruption all the way down to the municipal level.  Arizona, for instance, has a heavy reliance on mail-in balloting and it is used heavily by registered members of both parties.

Let’s establish some trends.  Here are the certified margins (from the Republican nominee perspective), expressed in margin of votes won or lost by, from 2012 through 2020:

In 2016, Trump won Arizona with almost no gain in total votes over Romney, and won Maricopa County with fewer votes than Romney in that county.

Trump 2016 won by more votes in the following:

·      Mohave

·      Navajo

·      Greenlee

·      Graham

·      Pinal

·      Gila

·      Yavapai

·      La Paz

Trump 2016 won by fewer votes in the following:

·      Cochise

·      Yuma

·      Maricopa

All of these losses in margin were because the large third-party vote share in the state, most of it for Gary Johnson (106,327 votes statewide), hurt him more than Clinton in those counties.

Three of four Democrat-won counties hit Trump harder than Romney, with Pima County being the most impactful and regressing by a margin of 30,761 votes.

Then came the infamous 2020 quasi-election, in which Trump won the following by more votes in margin than he did in 2016:

·      Mohave

·      Navajo

·      Greenlee

·      Graham

·      Pinal

·      Gila

·      Yavapai

·      La Paz

·      Cochise

·      Yuma

All of those have clear excess votes visible in the losing column, which blunted his margins and made it possible for Pima and Maricopa to do the big rig.  These counties moving to their organic likely margins would have kept the state in Trump’s hands even with Democrat certified victory margins untouched.

Trump “lost” Maricopa County for the first GOP nominee loss there since 1948, despite his own gain of nearly a quarter-million votes in the county being a party single cycle record gain.  Pima County went bonkers and is largely given a pass because it pales in comparison to the size and voting power of Maricopa, out to a margin of defeat of 97,233 ballots.

Here is what 2020 was, and what it should have looked like, per my estimates:

With very little done to mitigate the potential to cheat in Arizona, and with the 2022 midterms as yet another point of reference, I don’t think we are looking at the potential for a blowout in line with my 2020 revision (Trump +11.6%).

Here are things in Trump’s favor:

·      Expected to potentially break even with the Hispanic vote, which represents more than a quarter of the vote in Arizona.

·      Expected to perform stronger with Native Americans, who make up almost 5% of the state’s population.

·      All 15 counties are more Republican by registration since 2020, with the GOP advantage nearly twice as large as it was four years ago.  Maricopa County is nearly 3% more Republican today than it was then.

Here are the conditions I am setting in place for my 1% Trump victory forecast, which will require a margin of 35,000 to 40,000 votes, depending on turnout:

·      Trump to lose Maricopa County by same margin as 2020 (roughly 45,000).

Please note, I would expect Trump to win Maricopa County this year based on the registration trend and his expected gains with Hispanic voters, plus this cycle being his first with positive approval from LDS church members (over 483,000 in Arizona).

·      Trump to improve in Pima County (which includes metro Tucson), losing by “only” 80,000 ballots, largely owed to expected improvement with Hispanic voters.  This defeat margin is still 22,667 more than Trump’s own in 2016, when he lost votes from Romney.  Trump to make gains in margin in tiny Santa Cruz County due to Hispanic voters (he made up margin there in 2020 as well).

·      Trump to lose Apache and Coconino Counties worse in 2024, although he will most likely make up margin outside of my worst case scenario presented here.

·      Trump to advance margins in all 10 counties he improved on in 2020 even with the cheat, in accordance with cycle-to-cycle gains in 2016 and 2020, estimated conservatively.

Lo and behold, here is the Trump +1% county margins map, with the cheat present, which comes out to a win of 37,500 votes in margin:

It is going to be very difficult to stop Trump from taking Arizona back, especially given all the exposure the state’s rotten elections system has received in four years.  His margin should exceed 12 points in a fair race, but most likely would be inside 10 points even if he defies all expectations.  His improvement with minorities, with relatively few white liberals in the state and now fewer Mormons that hate him, are his biggest strengths.

Depending how much cheating is present, Arizona’s problematic elections system is most likely to impact Kari Lake for the U.S. Senate and jeopardize two very narrow legislative majorities.  Pay attention to media messaging.  A non-selection of Mark Kelly as Harris’s Vice Presidential nominee suggests to me that Arizona will be a likely Trump state and not targeted as heavily as it was in 2020, meaning the target in Arizona will be Lake, narrated through the lens of “suburban women hate her,” which is not factual, but part of the larger narrative of deceit.

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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.