In early August, Vice President Kamala Harris and her newly selected running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, swept through the Southwest, holding massive rallies in Phoenix and Las Vegas and energizing Democratic voters just before the party’s national convention, which concluded yesterday. Now, as the official Democratic presidential ticket, they need the staunch support of a few key voting blocs in Arizona and Nevada, crucial swing states that will help determine the outcome of the November election.
Christian Solomon, Nevada state director for the nonprofit Rise Free, which works with college-age voters, described the diverse, ecstatic crowds at Harris and Walz’s rallies. “Everybody’s life is just kind of exploding with this,” he told High Country News.
Arizona and Nevada are now reliably purple states, in part due to the influx of Democratic voters to metropolitan regions over the last decade. President Joe Biden, who stepped down as the Democratic candidate late last month, narrowly won both states in 2020, but recent polls suggested that he was losing support in his attempt at re-election, especially following a poor debate performance against former President Donald Trump. Ever since Harris stepped up, she has reinvigorated major demographics in the party’s base — including women and minorities — and she’s making noticeable inroads among independents.
“Everybody’s life is just kind of exploding with this.”
Recent polls from the research firm Focaldata and the New York Times/Siena College are showing Harris with a slight edge over Trump. Her gains in western swing states are at least partially attributable to her choice of her running mate. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who had also been under consideration, would have been more recognizable to Arizona voters, but Walz has shown a surprising ability to generate support among young people and independents.
Last year, voters who do not identity with a political party outnumbered Democrats and Republicans in both Arizona and Nevada. In Nevada, their numbers have risen consistently for more than a decade, aided in part by the state’s new automatic registration system. In Arizona, nearly half of voters under 30 are now registered as independent.
Thom Reilly, professor and co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University, said that independent voters are notoriously difficult to predict, but that they do tend to favor new candidates over incumbents. Nationally, they seem to switch every so often: In 2016, Trump’s success among independents helped vault him to the White House, but Biden recovered enough of their votes to win in 2020. This year, independents were trending toward Trump again until Harris reset the map. As of this month, she is polling nine points ahead of Trump among non-party-affiliated voters.
In general, voters crave economic policies that directly affect their quality of life, an area where Walz’s record is particularly strong. As governor, he has locked in policies for free school meals, child tax credits and increased labor protections for gig workers.
He also appeals directly to independents who are disillusioned by the polarized party system, according to Sondra Cosgrove, a history professor at the College of Southern Nevada and executive director of the civic engagement nonprofit Vote Nevada. Walz authorized the expansion of ranked-choice voting across Minnesota, a type of electoral reform that increased voter turnout in the Twin Cities. By allowing for some expansion without enforcing it statewide, Cosgrove said, Walz signaled a spirit of pragmatism and compromise. “I’m hoping that this is going to be a Tim Walz moment, where he can say, ‘I hear you. Let’s work on this. Let’s figure out,’” she added.
As for Harris, she has secured support from critical groups, such as the endorsement of Nevada’s powerful Culinary Local 226, a union that represents service industry workers in Las Vegas. She is polling well among women in both Arizona and Nevada, driven in part by her strong support of reproductive rights. As vice president, she has made multiple trips to Nevada, touting the importance of gun control in the wake of the University of Nevada Las Vegas shooting last year. She has also regained some of Biden’s 2020 support among Latino voters, who comprise a quarter of Arizonans and one-fifth of Nevadans.
Trump still has significant support in the Copper and Silver states. Many Arizona residents want to see tougher action on immigration, and the former president has made securing the border one of his top issues, while repeatedly criticizing Harris on this front. As vice president, she supported President Biden’s mission to address the root causes of immigration by working with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. While instances of illegal crossings from the three countries has decreased, they increased overall under Biden, until the administration’s recent cap on asylum. Harris has defended her record with the more recent policy, which border officials say reduced crossings over the summer.
Most polls have Trump and Harris essentially tied, and neither can be certain of the support of independent voters. Reilly, from Arizona State, noted that two-thirds of registered independents in Arizona failed to vote in 2020. This year, the voters he surveyed in June said they were more likely to turn out for down-ballot issues like abortion or water conservation than on behalf of either party. Still, it’s impossible to discount the dramatic shift in favor of Harris.
Nancy Gomez, 64, a retired administrator at Arizona State, came away from the Vice President’s Phoenix rally impressed at the energy generated by Harris and Walz. She supports the Biden administration’s policies generally, but this election, for her, is about leaving behind the last nine years of Trump. “People are tired of being angry at each other,” Gomez said, “There’s a level of excitement that I haven’t seen in a long, long time.”
