Updated 9/30/22
If you’re looking for “multi-word-score” opportunities to support Dems up and down the ballot in 2022, Arizona should definitely be on your list. Mark Kelly is hoping to win his first full-term election to the Senate, but a slew of well-funded Republicans have him in their sights. And in the Governor’s race, there’s a mad scrum of Dems and Republicans vying to replace Republican incumbent Doug Ducey, who is prohibited from running again due to term limits. Most pundits are calling both races toss-ups at this point, which means extra trickle-down and trickle-up turnout across the ballot could be critical!
With that in mind, we ran the numbers on Arizona’s U.S. House races to find the ones that are most important for Dems to support. The TL;DR is that we recommend that Dem donors support candidates in two AZ House districts in 2022 that are legit toss-ups. Two others seats are potential future opportunities for Dems, but we don’t have viable candidates in 2022, so we’re keeping an eye on them as possible R-to-D flips in 2024.
This post summarizes the results of our analysis; full details are in a post on our Github site. But before we get to the data, two quick points:
Quick interlude #1 — reminder of our methods: (Feel free to skip this if you’re familiar with our prior work.) We’ve developed and refined a demographic model to project the intrinsic Democratic lean in each new district based on its makeup in terms of race, sex, education, and population density. When we put those demographics together with what we know about partisan lean and turnout, we think our model gives a more realistic forward-looking view than the “historical model” (which looks at past voting history) of what Dem donors could conceivably achieve if we’re smart about where to deploy our resources and energy. More details are in the GitHub post and links therein.
Quick interlude #2 — plug for our prior analyses: Check out our other analyses of upcoming U.S. House and state legislature contests, including recommendations in NC, TX, GA, and more, by following this link to posts tagged ‘2022’. We’ll be updating them with ActBlue links as they’re available!
And now, back to our AZ analysis: Here are the two Arizona districts we think are highest-priority Dem donation opportunities:
AZ-1: This small district northeast of Phoenix is mainly comprised of old-AZ-6, whose Republican incumbent, David Schweikert, is likely to get the GOP nod. Dem primary winner Jevin Hodge is a political newbie, but based on the demographics we think this seat is winnable by Team Blue.
AZ-4: Democrat Greg Stanton cruised to a 20-point victory in old-AZ-9, but under redistricting this peri-Phoenix district is much more competitive. Republicans see this as one of their best pick-up opportunities in the nation, but our model says Stanton should be able to hold on if he gets enough help.
And here are two other districts we are keeping an eye on:
AZ-5: Given that incumbent Republican Andy Biggs has won all three of his Congressional races by at least 17 points, is it delusional to think we might be able to send the insurrectionist home? Not to us: the lines have shifted a bit, and our demographic model says the new district is much more swingy than advertised. Plus, there’s a decent chance that ex-Republican Clint Smith, running as a centrist, will split the Republican vote. The Dem candidate, lawyer Javier Ramos, is running a wholly grassroots, no-donations campaign, and while we applaud his ethics, we unfortunately can’t do much to help him directly. Good luck, Javier!
AZ-8: Dems didn’t field a candidate to appear on the ballot to take on Republican incumbent Debbie Lesko — which seems like a big mistake based on our model, because there seem to be more Dem votes in this district than history would suggest. (There is a Dem running as a write-in, but it’s not clear he is viable.) Let’s hope Team Blue gets its act together to mount a credible challenge in two years.
| DISTRICT | OUR MODEL | HISTORICAL MODEL | NOTES/ANALYSIS |
| AZ-1 | 50% Dem | 48% Dem | Toss-up; flippable by Dems. |
| AZ-4 | 55% Dem | 53% Dem | Toss-up; incumbent Dem is vulnerable. |
| AZ-5 | 49% Dem | 40% Dem | Rated safe for Republican incumbent, but appears to be moving toward Dems. (D candidate isn't accepting donations.) |
| AZ-8 | 51% Dem | 42% Dem | Rated safe for Republican incumbent, but appears to be moving toward Dems. (No declared D candidate.) |
We made a handy ActBlue link for AZ-1 and AZ-4 — please click below and donate to help Team Blue win these two House races in Arizona!
Also, please read our full Arizona analysis here — it’s got data, charts, and methods, oh my!
And finally, stay in touch by signing up for our email updates (see below) … more state analyses are coming down the pike!