Trump, Harris in dead heat

On By Littum

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were neck-and-neck in the first statewide results released shortly after polls closed Tuesday night, making this year’s unprecedented and unpredictable race for the White House too close to call Tuesday night.

Trump was narrowly leading, according to incomplete, unofficial results released Wednesday by the Arizona Secretary of State at 3 p.m., and had extended his lead slightly from earlier in the night.

At the county level, initial results showed Harris narrowly leading Trump in vote-rich Maricopa County shortly after polls closed Tuesday night. Approximately 60% of Arizona voters live in Maricopa County.

The Maricopa County results represented 1.1 million ballots, making up 43.43% of the county’s 2.5 million voters eligible to cast ballots in the election. The county expects 2.1 million voters to turn out and estimates 700,000 ballots remain to be tabulated in the coming days.

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The vote count released by Maricopa County includes ballots received Tuesday, Oct. 29, according to the county. Election Day personal votes will be posted throughout the evening. Voters were still voting at 7.30pm on Tuesday night. Polls closed at 7 p.m. in Arizona, but voters who were in line before that time could cast their ballots after the deadline.

Arizona is at the center of the presidential campaign. The battleground state has 11 electoral votes that will play a significant role in deciding which candidate wins the White House.

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 a president stepped aside in the middle of his re-election campaign. Also, presidential candidates running with a felony conviction are a rarity in American history.

The race is deadlocked in Arizona, according to the latest public opinion polls. Trump narrowly led Harris, but the numbers were so close that both candidates had a real chance to win the Grand Canyon State.

Voter frustrations over the economy and immigration are fueling Trump’s slight advantage among voters in Arizona. The former president has struck a confident tone during recent rallies in Arizona, even considering 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 he’s pleased with the early vote numbers. “We’re going to defeat Kamala Harris.”

Harris isn’t far behind, though. She is strongest on the issues of democracy and reproductive rights, and her campaign is building on a massive operation to put her over the top in a state where Democrats have made big gains in the Trump era.

“This is going to be a very close race until the end. And we’re the underdogs,” Harris told a rally crowd in Phoenix last month.

The race for the White House was shaping up to be a 2020 rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden, but it changed dramatically in late June when Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump sent Democrats into a panic. The president was pushed out of his own party within weeks. He dropped his re-election bid in July, well after the primary ended.

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 would be the target of another failed assassination attempt in September.

Harris stepped up to take Biden’s seat just weeks before the Democratic National Convention, keeping high-profile members of her party with their own presidential ambitions and the possibility of an open convention. Harris had just three months to put together a presidential campaign in his new role as the nominee. She inherited Biden’s campaign operations across the country, including in Arizona, which had been laying the groundwork for the general election since February.

This story will be updated as election results are reported.