The chilling effect that gave red state a dose of the blues

If Joe Biden really does win Arizona, he will have air conditioning to thank. It was the arrival of smaller, more affordable cooling units in the Forties that allowed home-building in the Valley of the Sun – and unlocked a wave of migration within the US that may have helped flip this red state blue.

The votes were still being counted last night, and Mr Biden’s lead had narrowed. But reversing it entirely would be a tall order for Mr Trump, and both the Associated Press and the Republican-supporting Fox News both called it for the Democrats. If they were right, it would be the first such win since Bill Clinton in 1996, and only the second since 1948.

To even come that close reveals how much Arizona’s electorate has changed in 10 years. And while attention has rightly focused on its increasingly mobilised Latin American community, there has been less heed paid to the role of Arizona’s other immigrants.

“We have been on this incredible, incredible growth spurt,” says Mike O’neil, a veteran pollster in Arizona’s state capital Phoenix who came here himself about 40 years ago. “Almost everybody that lives here is from somewhere else … there’s a joke in town when you run across somebody and they say they were born here, your response is ‘oh, you’re the one’.”

From a population of less than 500,000 in 1940, Arizona has boomed to 7.3 million, with a huge initial growth spurt after the Second World War. Such was the buzz that it also became the new home of London Bridge, which was taken apart stone by stone and now rests at Lake Havasu, complete with red telephone box.

Yet 2.2 million of Arizona’s new residents came here in the last 10 years, propelling the state to third on last year’s census league table for net domestic gain. That was thanks in part to a booming pre-pandemic economy and plentiful jobs, many of which are concentrated in Phoenix and its surrounding Maricopa County.

Where are people coming from? By far the biggest origin is California, in particular cities such as San Francisco, which helps explain at least some of Arizona’s decade-long blue shift. While many new Arizonans (including the bridge) are retirees, young families are also attracted by the climate and cheap living. The influx caused Phoenix’s “flip zone”, a hotly-contested “purple ring” that divides the blue inner city from the red outer suburbs, to draw back two miles between 2016 and 2018.

“It’s inarguably bringing Democratic people here,” says Zach Fuller, 27, who moved to the Phoenix metro area from Idaho three years ago.

Speaking before election day, he aligns himself with President Trump but does not begrudge those who bring more Left-wing views.

“There are lots of young engineers, older engineers … the job market here is incredible, and it’s a very familyfriendly area,” he says.

The impact was especially visible in two statewide referendums bundled in with Tuesday’s vote. Arizonans voted to legalise recreational cannabis, having rejected a similar measure in 2016. There was a strong showing, too, for higher taxes on the wealthy to fund schools. All of which leaves Arizona’s old core of rural conservative voters a distinct minority. “They’re still there, but they’re being overwhelmed by city folks who live in metropolitan Phoenix and Tucson,” says Mr O’neil.

“There are hi-tech workers and service workers and there are a lot of building trades because of the growth.”

If Mr Biden does succeed here, his victory will have many parents.

Arizona’s independents soured on Mr Trump, alongside centrist Republicans such as Cindy Mccain, widow of the long-serving senator John Mccain. “There has been a tremendous shift in suburban voters to the Democratic Party, especially among women in general, and college-educated women in particular,” says Mr O’neil.

Hispanic voters are also likely to have played a major role, not only

because of their numbers but also due to a decade of political awakening and organising sparked by 2010’s infamous “show your papers” immigration law. The Hispanic population here is far younger on average than that of Florida, where Mr Biden did worse than Hillary Clinton among that group.

Last night an eleventh-hour red shift remained possible, with hundreds of thousands of ballots yet to be counted and Doug Ducey, Arizona’s governor, calling for patience. “President Trump is on pace to win Arizona,” said Jason Miller, a top campaign adviser to Mr Trump, who demanded Fox News recant its call. Whatever the result, Arizona’s population trends will continue, meaning its politics have probably changed for good.

“We’re excited, because we know that we have the infrastructure here to make this a blue state,” says Edder Díaz-martínez, communications director for the Maricopa County Democrats. “We’re at the point where we’re going to completely shift the power dynamic within the state.”

Mr O’neil finds an echo of Arizona’s changes in the history of its annual war with pollen. He says some moved here to soothe their pollen allergies in the state’s dry desert climate.

But mass settlement has also brought mass planting of new trees, shrubs and grasses, creating a brutal new sneezing season.

“That’s a wonderful analogy,” says Mr O’neil. “You come out here for one thing, and by being here you change it.”