An Arizona Supreme Court verdict preserving a 160-year-old, near-total abortion ban shocked the state and solidified its political center in 2024.
Arizona and its 11 electoral votes will again be crucial in the presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump after 10,000 votes separated them in 2020. Vice President Kamala Harris announced a Friday trip to Arizona hours after the state Supreme Court's abortion decision.
Both the Senate and House are closely divided, so voters will determine crucial contests. Republican Kari Lake, who lost the 2022 governorship, and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego are fighting to replace independent Sen.
Kyrsten Sinema. GOP Reps. David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani expect tight races in their toss-up districts. (Lake, Schweikert, and Ciscomani criticized the state Supreme Court's abortion verdict, while Trump claimed it was excessive.)
An amendment enshrining abortion rights in the Arizona constitution may be on the November ballot, giving voters a stark option. Arizona is among the 11 states where abortion could be on the ballot this fall. After the state Supreme Court's ruling on one of the nation's strongest abortion prohibitions, the ballot initiative could draw disaffected voters.
Arizona has the largest Latino population share of any core battleground state, according to the Census Bureau; Maricopa, a former Republican stronghold where more than 2 million people voted in 2020 and Biden narrowly won; increasingly MAGA-fied rural counties racing in the other direction; and Arizona State University, the nation's largest university by in-person enrollment.
Arizona will demonstrate how different factions are addressing the most critical concerns in the 2024 election, which might determine Washington's power structure. Leading a political party is difficult today. In a society where political opinions are binary and nuance is forbidden, finding a one-size-fits-all Middle East policy or reproductive rights viewpoint is difficult.
The “spirit” of a political position no longer hides an actual viewpoint. Despite his longtime backing for Israel, Biden has struggled to win over a Democratic base that increasingly doubts the Israeli government's wartime justice.
Trump's controversial viewpoint shouldn't be controversial in the GOP, ironically. Trump is only repeating the party's decades-old position: leave it to the states. Conservative abortionists demand a government limit. Restoring reproductive rights to the states was not the anti-abortion movement's goal pre-Dobbs. The purpose was to restrict abortion access as quickly as possible.
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