BATTLEGROUND SERIES: 11 electoral votes in Arizona hinge on swing county Biden narrowly won in 2020.

MARICOPA COUNTY, AZ – Arizona is expected to be one of the most watched and most competitive states in the upcoming presidential election and the largest state in the state will play an important role in determining who wins that state and ultimately the White House.

Maricopa County, which surrounds Phoenix in south-central Arizona and is home to more than 4.5 million people, is widely considered one of the key battleground states in the United States due to its political diversity and will deliver a crucial 11 electoral votes to any former President Trump. or Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Maricopa County is our largest and most populous county in Arizona,” Arizona GOP Chairwoman Gina Swoboda told Fox News Digital. “It contains more than 60% of our voters statewide. About a third Democrat, a third Republican, and a third Independent. That’s changing a bit. But actually, we are third, third, third. “

“We have what I would call a dense urban core in Phoenix. And then we have the suburbs and it’s growing. It’s always one of the fastest growing counties in the United States. It’s a diverse county just because of the makeup, we’ve got the cities and then we’ve got the suburbs and then we’ve got small towns becoming cities very quickly, that puts pressure on large in society and because it is 60% of the state vote, it gets a lot of attention.”

IN SPEECH IN ARIZONA, VANCE SAYS NEXT PRESIDENT SHOULD PUT AMERICANS FIRST, SLAMS FEMA MONEY FOR IMMIGRANTS.

Swoboda told Fox News Digital that if you want to run for office in Maricopa County “you have a lot of voters” and “you have to speak to their issues.”

Those important issues during this election period, according to Swoboda, are the economy and immigration.

““Inflation is number one and when we say inflation in Arizona, we are one of the hardest hit states in the country because our rates are going up,” said Swoboda. “But part of that is affordable housing. And that’s a big problem in the state of Arizona, especially in fast-growing Maricopa. “

President Joe Biden won the state of Arizona by less than one-half of a percentage point in the 2020 election and the results in Maricopa County were also narrow as Biden beat former President Trump by 2 percentage points.

The Harris-Walz campaign has been active in the state for the past few months and the Arizona campaign team told Fox News Digital that they knocked on 90,000 doors, made more than 1.7 million phone calls, and had 15,000 volunteers complete the switch. region.

ENIGMATIC VOTER GROUP MAY SPLIT TICKET FOR TRUMP, DEM CANDIDATE FOR SENATE IN ARIZONA

Signs direct voters to a drop-off box for early voting outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center before Arizona’s midterm elections in Phoenix, Arizona on November 3, 2022. ((Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images))

“Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, Second Lieutenant Emhoff, and Minnesota First Lady Gwen Walz all visited Arizona in September,” the campaign said. “Recently, Vice President Harris visited Douglas, Arizona to talk about his policies to keep Arizona’s border safe, marking his eighth visit to Arizona this year.”

Polls increasingly show Trump leading Harris among low-income voters who have turned out to be voters increased concentration in the Trump ground game. The same is true in Arizona, especially Maricopa County, where Turning Point Action, which has spearheaded Trump’s GOTV efforts, has launched programs like “Commit 100” and “Chase the Vote” to mobilize those voters.

A spokesperson for Turning Point Action told Fox News Digital that it is targeting the 400,000 low-income voters in Arizona and that Republican voter registration efforts in Arizona over the past two years have “put the state in a very difficult demographic position for Democrats.”

Immigrants arrive at a remote US Border Patrol facility after crossing the US-Mexico border on December 07, 2023 in Lukeville, Arizona. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

An RNC spokesperson told Fox News Digital that Republicans have “doubled” GOP voter registration gains in Arizona since 2020 and that the RNC has nearly a dozen offices across the country as part of its Trump Force 47 plan to “meet voters where they are.” “

Nationally, immigration is one of the most important issues for voters according to polls and that is not the case in Arizona where voters who spoke to Fox News Digital said that immigration is a major concern even though there are different opinions on who will best manage this ongoing problem.

“We should be arrested immediately at the border,” Mary of Phoenix told Fox News Digital. “And if there is any suspicion that they will commit a crime, arrest them.”

Mary said it was “outrageous” that the latest bipartisan border deal died in Congress and said that if Harris was elected, she would “sign it.”

Nick from Sun City West told Fox News Digital that Harris’ immigration policy is “very bad.”

Former President Trump and US vice president US Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, appeared on the first day of the Republican National Convention on July 15, 2024. (Wina McNamee/Getty Images)

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS PROGRAM

“Control the border,” he said. “At least keep the border safe. Keep people from being able to come in that they shouldn’t come in unless they’re coming in through the normal normal channels.”

Trump holds a narrow two-point lead over Harris in the battleground state of Arizona, according to the latest public opinion poll.

Exacerbating the former president’s margin appears to be support from voters aged 50 and over. Trump stands at 49% among likely voters in Arizona, Harris at 47%, according to an AARP poll conducted Sept. 24-Oct. 1 and released on Tuesday. According to the survey, Green Party candidate Jill Stein received 1% support, while 3% were undecided.

“In some ways, it’s like its own state because 65, 68% of the people in the state of Arizona live in Maricopa County,” Arizona GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake told Fox News Digital. “It’s one of those big counties. Obviously and I think it’s a big county, but it’s a big county. So we’re a really important county. What happens in Maricopa County can affect the whole country and the whole world, because we know any way Maricopa County can take the whole country in that way, because it’s so big, it can take the whole region that way.”

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser and Hannah Ray Lambert contributed to this report