As the midnight deadline approached yesterday, the Maricopa County Recorder's office was almost overwhelmed with the numbers of new voters coming forward to register.
According to the Maricopa County Recorder's office, close to 70,000 new voters registered in the past two weeks, 12,500 over the weekend. Recorder's Office spokeswoman Elizabeth Bartholomew told AZcentral.
While the Arizona Secretary of State has not yet provided the final registration numbers for this upcoming election, Democrats may stand to benefit from the efforts of outside groups to register Hispanics and youth in mass. In fact, their efforts were so successful that they asked election officials all over the state to extend the registration deadlines.
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Democrat groups targeting young voters and Hispanics boasted impressive registration numbers over the last two weeks of eligibility. With early voting ballots being sent out on Wednesday, these groups will turn their attention to getting out the vote.
Over 150k NEWLY registered AZ voters!! Congrats @OneArizona and all these citizens ready to ROCK those votes! #AZVotes #GOTV https://t.co/4Vvxm2pyGA
— Erin Cochran (@ErinCoAZ) October 11, 2016
@dianeguerrero__ at Copper High School in Glendale promoting voter registration @UnivisionAZ @MiFamiliaVotaAZ @OITNB #VotaPorTuAmerica pic.twitter.com/oLCg0gn94E
— GeRaRdo HiGGiNsOn (@PoRtAvOz) September 30, 2016
Historically, AZ has always been a Republican state, in fact, before the primary election last August 30th, Republicans in the state surpassed independents as the largest voting block in the state, while Democrats cracked the 1 million registered voter mark.
Since then, however, growing anti-Trump sentiments among the Hispanic community (which represents over 30% of the Arizona electorate) may have pushed the Democrats much closer to making Arizona a very contested state. the RCP Electoral map still lists Arizona as a "toss-up" and Hillary Clinton does lead the latest polls.
