November 8, 2016 2020 → 11 0 48.67% 45.13% | Turnout 74.17% 1,252,401 1,161,167 Date 8 November 2016 | |
Trump
40-50%
50-60%
60-70%
70-80% Clinton
50-60%
60-70%
70-80% | ||
The 2016 United States presidential election in Arizona was held on November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 General Election in which all 50 states plus The District of Columbia participated. Arizona voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting the Republican Party's nominee, businessman Donald Trump, and running mate Indiana Governor Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine.
Contents
On March 22, 2016, in the presidential primaries, Arizona voters expressed their preferences for the Democratic, Republican, and Green parties' respective nominees for President. (The Libertarian Party uses a privately funded caucus to select its presidential delegates and does not allow independents to vote in its primary.) Registered members of each party only voted in their party's primary, while voters who were unaffiliated chose any one primary in which to vote, except in presidential elections.
Donald Trump won Arizona with a margin of 3.5%, a significantly reduced margin from Mitt Romney's 9.03% margin in 2012. Arizona was among the eleven states in which Hillary Clinton outperformed Barack Obama's margin in 2012.
Democratic primary
Six candidates appeared on the Democratic presidential primary ballot:
Republican primary
Fourteen candidates appeared on the Republican presidential primary ballot:
Green primary
The Arizona Green Party held its primary on March 22. Jill Stein won with 82% of the vote, and the overall number of voters that took place in the primary saw an increase from 561 in 2012 to 770 in 2016. Only two candidates qualified for the primary:
Alleged voter suppression
There is considerable controversy surrounding the Arizona primary elections of 2016, specifically having to do with the dramatic decrease in polling places in Maricopa County from 200 in 2012, to only 60 in 2016, despite the number of registered voters having increased from 300,000 in 2012 to 800,000 in 2016. This decrease in polling places was most pronounced in minority neighborhoods, most notably Latino neighborhoods, with areas like Central Phoenix having only 1 polling place for 108,000 voters. There were also reports of many voters who had been previously registered, coming up as unregistered, or registered as an independent, making them ineligible to vote. Voters who did manage to vote had to stand in long lines to cast their ballots, some for as long as five hours. Additionally, voters reported being required to vote with a provisional ballot. In 2005, Arizona threw out 27,878 provisional ballots, counting only about 72.5% of the total provisional ballots reported. Taking into account Arizona's increasingly lax voting laws, and the amplifying effects of the Supreme Court's "gutting of the Voting Rights Act", it's unknown what percentage of the provisional ballots were counted. This was the first presidential primary election in the state of Arizona since the 2013 Supreme Court decision to strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which would have previously required Southern states with a history of voter discrimination, including Arizona, to receive Federal approval before implementing any changes to voting laws and practices. These irregularities have led many to suspect a deliberate act of voter suppression and electoral fraud.
Within a day after the election took place on March 22, a petition went viral on the White House petitions site asking the Department of Justice to investigate voter suppression and election fraud in Arizona that reached its goal of 100,000 signatures in record time compared to other popular petitions. In addition, Phoenix mayor Greg Stanton asked the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the allegations of voter suppression.
The Department of Justice has since launched a federal investigation into the primary.
Turnout
Voter Turnout was 74.17% with 2,661,497 ballots cast out of 3,588,466 voters.