Arizona Early Voting Numbers Show Advantage For Democrats

Over 1 million Arizonans have already voter this election, and the historically red state may be seing some shifts. Democrats have invested alot of time, money and man power into turning Arizona blue this election by driving up hispanic and youth turnout, and thus far it seems to be working according to data obtained by AZcentral.

Early voting has usually been considered a luxury in past election cycles but in critical states like Florida ir is quickly becoming the norm. Arizona is following that trend seing an increase thus far this cycle over 2012 from around 900,000 voters to over 1.3 million votes.

Early voting usually benefits whichever campaign has a better ground game, which in Arizona belongs to Hillary Clinton. Early voting is seen by campaigns as a way of having less people to deal with and turnout on election day propper.

When looking at early balloting by congressional district, the findings are pretty much what is expected. No real surprises can be seen coming in the congressional races when the early vote is calculated sitrict by district.As expected the closest congressional race in early voting seems to be that of Congressional District one, the open seat vacated by aspiring Senator Ann Kirkpatrick. This race has embattled Pinal county sheriff Paul Babeu going up against Democrat Tom O'Halleran. Thus far O'Halleran seems to have a slight edge according to party turnout.

While CNN had previously reported a greater number of Democrats had turned out than Republicans, the latest numbers show diferently with Republicans maintaining their advantage over Democrats. This advantage however, has greatly shrunk from 2012 causing concern ammong Republican strategists in the state. 

The big driver for Democrats to win Arizona is the Hispanic vote. Historically Democrats have not put much money or effort into turning out the growing number of hispanics because Arizona has never really been in play. This year however, that story is changing. Arizona is now a true toss-up state, thus the Democrat machinery is turning out Hispanics who had never turned out before. Something which is clearly reflected in the early voting stats. This same principle applies to youth turnout. Hillary Clinton, Chelea Clinton, Tim Kaine and Bernie Sanders all have vitited colleges and universities across the state in the last few weeks.

These numbers are not official returns. What they are is a breakdown of who has turned out according to which party the voter is registerd as.