PHOENIX (AP/AZFamily) — Donald Trump will carry Arizona for the first time since 2016, the Associated Press projects, winning the state’s 11 electoral votes.
Polls showed the race between the former president and Kamala Harris were virtually tied in Arizona in the days leading up to the election, with at least one poll indicating Trump was edging ahead.
Both candidates and their running mates made several visits to Arizona before the election, which remained a major electoral battleground in 2024. In his most recent visit, Trump made an appearance with conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson in Glendale last Thursday.
During a previous visit earlier last month in Prescott Valley, the former president proposed hiring 10,000 additional Border Patrol agents and giving them a $10,000 retention and signing bonus. He accepted an endorsement from the agents’ union, the National Border Patrol Council, which is a longtime Trump backer that endorsed him during his prior two campaigns.
Trump made illegal immigration the focus of his campaign and blamed Harris for a record spike in unauthorized crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. He frequently denounces people entering the U.S. illegally as invaders and criminals, and he has vowed to stage the largest deportation operation in American history if he is elected president again.
Maricopa County is by far the most influential of the state’s 15 counties in statewide elections. It is home to Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe and Mesa and contributed nearly 62% of the vote in the 2020 presidential race. Pima County was a distant second with about 15% of the vote.
In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump 49.4% to 49.1%, becoming only the second Democratic presidential candidate to do so since 1948 in the longtime Republican stronghold.
While Arizona is a battleground now, it wasn’t considered particularly competitive eight years ago when it voted for Trump by a 4-percentage-point margin in his race against Hillary Rodham Clinton.
See the latest election results here.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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