Why Joe Biden could win 2020 US Election due to Covid-19 as swing states like Arizona turn from Donald Trump
Most of Arizona’s postal votes have already been counted.
Which means this desert battleground will probably be one of the first states to give up clues about the 2020 election result.Florida will be another, and if President Donald Trump loses both he’s finished.
Arizona and Florida are unlike some other states which don’t allow any counting to commence until after the polls have closed.
During the primaries (when voters selected the candidates) 88% of votes in Arizona were postal.
The figure won’t be as high in the presidential election because many Republicans have been dissuaded from using postal votes by Mr Trump’s disparaging claims about that way of doing things.With no evidence whatsoever he has claimed it’s open to widespread fraud.
There has never been a Republican president who didn’t win Arizona. The state is that reliably red. But Democrats are gaining ground.
I’m in Maricopa County, the fastest growing county in the United States AND one of the five worst hit counties in the nation when it comes to coronavirus.
Maricopa is more populous than 23 of America’s states - and if you don’t win here you don’t win Arizona.In 2012, the Republican Mitt Romney won Maricopa with a majority of about 145,000 votes.
Four years later Donald Trump’s majority was 100,000 votes fewer.
During the mid-term congressional elections in 2018 the Democratic candidate for the senate defeated her Republican rival with a majority of 60,000.
What’s more worrying for Mr Trump is that 16% of Republican women voted for the Democrat.
Here, like elsewhere, he appears to have a problem with women.
He may also have a problem with Latinos, who make up almost one-third of Arizona’s population.
Getting them out to vote can be tough.
In 2016 they only made up 15% of the electorate.
This time they have been galvanized by a pandemic that has hit their community disproportionately hard, and by the fact that most have Mexican ancestry.
They haven’t forgotten Mr Trump’s insults about "rapists" and "drug-traffickers" flooding over the southern border.Nor will mothers and grandmothers forget those images of caged Hispanic children separated from their parents, thanks to Mr Trump’s zero tolerance policy on illegal immigration.
Arizona is all about turn-out. Republicans are very good at it.
They know how to win here and have done so every time, except once, since 1952.
But the winds of change are blowing through this state and it is no longer an unassailable red bastion.
You can toss a coin.
Watch Trump vs Biden: The Results on Tuesday 3rd November from 11pm on ITV