Is Arizona a swing state?

Arizona is one of the seven states classified as battlegrounds based on their 2024 presidential results. It carries 11 electoral votes, and its recent trajectory marks it as a swing state: Trump won it in 2016, Biden won it in 2020 by roughly three-tenths of a percentage point, and Trump won it again in 2024 by approximately 5.5 percentage points - the widest margin of any of the seven battlegrounds that year.

Arizona politics are dominated by Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and about 60 percent of the state's voters. As Maricopa's fast-growing suburbs have become more competitive, the county has swung statewide outcomes. Pima County (Tucson) is reliably Democratic, while the state's rural counties are strongly Republican.

For most of the 20th century Arizona was a Republican stronghold - it voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election from 1952 through 2016 except 1996. Biden's narrow 2020 win was the first Democratic presidential victory there in 24 years, which is what put Arizona on the modern battleground map.

For 2028, Arizona is tracked as a tossup. Although Trump's 2024 margin was the largest among the battlegrounds, the state's underlying closeness across cycles, its growing and diversifying electorate, and its large independent voter bloc keep it genuinely competitive for both parties.