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Originally Posted by edslunch
With the AZ Presidential vote going blue or purple how close is the state legislature to flipping? I assume that’s a much bigger hurdle because reasons.
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It's close. It used to be a fairly purple state, although the legislature has been red since the mid 60s, but is 16/14 in the state senate and 31/29 in the house. Both have gone from 2/3rds majority a decade ago to a virtual toss-up.
They use an approach where each district elects 2 house reps and each voter can vote for up to 2, so that means that even small, localized shifts in voter preference can have big swings in outcome; in a highly polarized district, one party might win both seats but be just a slight swing away from losing both.
That said, it's really hard to know which way it's going. It's been moving solidly blue during Trump's time on the ticket, but traditionally the non-presidential party usually gains down-ballot in the first midterm. This is one state where you'd think that distancing themselves from Trump would be a slam dunk policy, but the state Republicans obviously don't see it that way.