Executive leadership in Arizona is occupied almost entirely by Democrats, but the margin of victory in 2022 at the state level where Attorney General Kris Mayes defeated her opponent by just 511 votes and Governor Katie Hobbs won by just over seventeen thousand votes.  

With this as a backdrop, broad concern about the performance of the economy following the dystopic COVID pandemic left  statewide Democrats managing a  frayed international supply chains, rising energy prices, and higher costs to everyday goods.   Following President Biden’s poor performance in the June warm-up debate with former President Trump, the public’s faith in Democrats to solve these problems plummeted despite clear signs that the economy was rebounding.  Democrats panicked, and pushed President Biden off the ticket, giving Kamala Harris just 100 days to cram for a final exam.  

While Harris injected the party with optimism, voters ultimately were unimpressed. One prevailing narrative following the 2024 Presidential Election was the support President Trump received from young Latino men.  Riding a wave of dissatisfaction about the state of the economy, analysts warned that Latino men in particular could find relief in a campaign designed to appeal to them. A Unidos survey conducted in the summer of 2022 asked Latino men if they thought the country was going in the right or wrong direction. Thirty-seven percent said it was going in the right direction, and fifty-three percent said the wrong direction. In 2024,  that result moved slightly, with forty-two  percent saying the right direction, and fifty-three percent saying the wrong direction. Nearly two years later, the latest poll by Unidos shows substantive change in the attitudes of Latino men in Arizona. The same question yielded sixty-four percent of Latino answering the wrong direction, and just thirty percent saying the country was going in the right direction.  There is also less indecisiveness over this question, with just six percent saying they don’t know. In 2022 and 2024, that answer was ten percent.

These results come from a national survey sponsored by Unidos, where they collected interviews from 3,000 Latinos, of which  400 respondents are  from Arizona. Respondents were asked if they would still vote for Donald Trump if they had to do it over again. Among Latino men in Arizona from the ages of 18-29, thirty-nine percent said they would not.  Overall, nineteen percent of Arizona Latinos who voted for Trump said they would not do so again. 

Dissatisfaction with Donald Trump could have negative downstream effects with the upcoming governor’s election and dissatisfaction with the direction of the country shows clear disappointment.  While it is difficult to tell if a statewide election without Donald Trump at the top of the ticket will be a positive this time for Arizona’s executive leadership, the Unidos data suggests President Trump’s performance is certainly having an impact on the mood of Latino voters.  Just twenty-one percent of Latinos in Arizona said they planned on voting for Andy Biggs for governor, with fifty-two percent saying they would vote for Hobbs. Twenty-one percent said they are still undecided. 

Latinos in Arizona are still overwhelmingly looking for solutions to cost of living and inflation, with that issue ranking first among Latinos as a top-three issue at fifty-seven percent and the economy ranking second with 44 percent of Latinos ranking it in their top three most important issues. This should raise concerns among Republicans and bells of opportunity for Democrats going into the next election. The next 6 months will be a test to see if Republicans and Democrats in the legislature decide if gridlock or working together will be do their advantage, and Governor Hobbs will need to decide if vetoing proposals by Republicans in the legislature or  finding compromise will be effective in convincing Latinos that she is the reliable steward they should vote for again for the next two years.