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US election 2020: Blow-up over controversial call of Arizona for Joe Biden

The Trump campaign has furiously demanded a controversial call of a crucial state for Joe Biden be reversed – but the expert is standing firm.

Natalie Brown and Frank Chung
4 min read
November 5, 2020 - 12:20PM
Arnon Mishkin rejects demand to reverse his call of Arizona for Joe Biden (Fox News)
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Fox News election expert Arnon Mishkin has rejected the Trump campaign’s demand to reverse his call of Arizona for Joe Biden.

The network was the first to call the traditionally Republican state for Mr Biden on Tuesday night, sparking outrage from Republicans. The Associated Press later concurred.

With Arizona, Mr Biden sits on 264 electoral votes – meaning he is just six votes shy of winning the presidency. If Nevada is called for the Democrat, the race is over.

The Trump campaign insists it is on track to win in Arizona with around 600,000 in-person, election-day ballots still to be counted that are expected to favour the President at a rate of more than 60 per cent.

Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday night, Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said as the count narrowed there was “going to be great pressure on you guys, to be honest with you, Fox News, to rescind your call”.

“It was a premature call, and you know that we were livid about the fact that you and then AP made that call,” he said. “You don’t want to be in a position, this is going to lead Joe Biden (to) falsely declare himself the President-elect at some point.”

Mr Mishkin was asked by host Martha McCallum about the Trump campaign’s projections. “If that were the case, would that state move?” she said.

“If a frog had wings,” Mr Mishkin replied.

“I mean, we believe fairly strongly that the vote is going to come in, it’s going to confirm our call, others will then call Arizona for the former Vice President. We’re confident in our call and we’ll see when the data comes in ... the data will basically look like the data we’ve noticed throughout the count in Arizona and therefore we’re not pulling back on that.”

Mr Mishkin was asked why he could not call North Carolina for Mr Trump, where he leads by around 77,000 votes with 95 per cent counted.

“Because in North Carolina we’re waiting for a different flavour of vote than we’re waiting for in Nevada,” he said.

If Mr Biden indeed wins Arizona, he will be only the second Democrat to turn it blue since 1952. Mr Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Arizona by a moderately comfortable margin of 4 per cent in 2016.

It’s a big victory for Mr Biden because it means he only has to win two of the three Rust Belt states – Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania – rather than all of them.

The President himself – during a premature victory speech where he threatened Supreme Court action – declared the Republicans still “have a lot of life in (Arizona)”, but they “don’t even need it, we don’t need that”.

“If you look and you see Arizona, we have a lot of life in that,” he told media during an address at the White House.

“Somebody declared it was a victory for, and maybe it will be, it’s possible. But there’s a lot of voters. We don’t even need it, we don’t need that. That’s just a state that we would have gotten and it would have been nice.”

While Republican Senate spokeswoman Natalie Johnson earlier accused Fox News’ declaration as “purely conjecture and insanely irresponsible”, the network’s election expert Mr Mishkin defended the call.

“I’m sorry, the President is not going to be able to gain enough votes to overcome Biden’s lead,” he said.

“I’m sorry, we’re not wrong in this particular case.”

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE ELECTION’S OUTCOME

There may be 50 states in America, but when the votes are counted, just a handful of them – Arizona included – decide who wins the presidential election.

In this election, 15 states fall into the category of a “swing state” or “battleground state” – meaning they could conceivably be won by either Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

As for the rest, we already know who will win them: Mr Trump stands no chance whatsoever in Democratic Party strongholds like New York and California, for example, while he’s likely unbeatable in heavily Republican territory, like Alabama or Oklahoma.

Worth 11 electoral votes, Arizona has only voted for a Democratic candidate once since 1952 – Bill Clinton, in 1996.

While that may not sound like the voting pattern of a swing state, Arizona was very much in play this election, with Mr Trump only once leading Mr Biden in the state’s polling average.

Of significance, perhaps, is the fact that Arizona was the home state of the late Republican senator John McCain, an American war hero who died in 2018.

Mr Trump feuded with Mr McCain, who was one of the President’s few vocal critics within his own party, and that might hurt him with Arizonans.

The state has also undergone a pretty clear political shift to the left since 2016, with Democrats winning a few marquee statewide elections.

The ultimate goal is to reach a threshold of 270 electoral votes. Winning the popular vote in any given state will earn a candidate its entire haul of electoral votes, and move them that much closer to victory.

Read related topics:Donald TrumpJoe BidenKamala HarrisUS Democratic Party | 2024 Election News & UpdatesUS Republican Party | 2024 Election News & Updates

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Original URL: https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/way-too-soon-dispute-over-arizona-result/news-story/afc66f0d8ddaa208ee9068be719f5e6a