Election Day in Arizona: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in a dead heat
An unprecedented and unpredictable race for the White House between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris comes to an end Tuesday, as Arizona voters decide between two remarkably different visions for the nation.
Arizona is in the center of the action, a battleground state with 11 electoral votes that will play a significant role in determining which candidate wins the White House.
Polls are open in Arizona from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday. Many Arizonans have already voted, using mail ballots and drop boxes to make their choice.
Locally, the Arizona Democratic Party is hosting an election night event in Phoenix. The state GOP opted against hosting a party this year.
Election 2024: See Arizona election results | Live coverage throughout Election Day
The dramatic battle for the presidency has been marked by chaos and a list of unexpected events.
Only a handful of times in history has a former president lost and sought the White House again, or has a president stepped aside in the middle of his reelection campaign. Plus, presidential candidates running with a felony conviction are a rarity in U.S. history.
The race is a dead heat in Arizona, according to the latest public pools. Trump narrowly leads Harris but the numbers are so close that either candidate has a real shot at winning the Grand Canyon State.
Voter frustrations with the economy and immigration are fueling Trump's slight advantage among Arizona voters. The former president has struck a confident tone during recent Arizona rallies, even musing on stage in Prescott Valley that he should be in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania instead.
"We're going to win Arizona," Trump said at an October rally in Tempe, noting that he's pleased with the early vote numbers. "We're going to defeat Kamala Harris."
Harris is not far behind, though. She's strongest on the issues of democracy and reproductive rights, and her campaign is banking on a massive ground game operation to put her over the top in a state where Democrats have made major gains during the Trump era.
"This will be a very tight race until the very end. And we are the underdog," Harris told a rally crowd in Phoenix last month.
The battle for the White House was shaping up to be a 2020 rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden, but it changed dramatically at the end of June when Biden's disastrous debate performance against Trump sent Democrats into a panic. The president was pushed out by his own party in a matter of weeks. He dropped his reelection bid in July, well after the primary election was over.
That same month, Trump was nearly killed on live television when a gunman opened fire during the former president's campaign rally in Pennsylvania. A bullet struck his ear, leaving Trump bloodied but otherwise unharmed as Secret Service agents rushed him off the stage. He'd be the target of another failed assassination attempt in September.
Harris stepped up to take Biden's place just weeks before the Democratic National Convention, holding off the high-profile members of her party with their own presidential ambitions and the possibility of an open convention. Harris had only three months to put together a presidential campaign in her new role as the nominee. She inherited Biden's campaign operations across the country, including in Arizona, which had been laying general election groundwork since February.
This story will be updated as election results are reported.
