Last week Arizona selected Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as the state’s Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, respectively. But, as The Wall Street Journal notes, the will of the state’s largest voting bloc remains a mystery. That’s because voters registered as Independents aren’t allowed to participate in the state’s primary. And in Arizona, that’s a significant number of primary votes that will remain uncast.
Arizona has 1.2 million independents registered—outnumbering Republicans by one hundred thousand and Democrats by 280,000. Colorado voters have a vested interest in this debate. There are only eight states where Independents outnumber Dems and GOP voters, and Colorado is one of them. This is significant because Trump is such an unknown quantity, and pundits are still unsure which way independents will vote in states like Colorado and Arizona.
Trump could conceivably do well in Arizona, which hasn’t voted Democrat in a presidential election since 1996.
