April 15, 2020

There Have Been 13 Arizona Polls in the Last 14 Months and Trump Has Led Only One of Them

Shutterstock/Evan El-Amin

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A new poll released Wednesday by OH Predictive Insights had some very good news for Arizona Democrats: The party’s likely Senate nominee, former astronaut Mark Kelly, leads Republican Sen. Martha McSally by nine points. And better still, Kelly is at or above the 50 percent threshold for the second consecutive poll.

Or maybe it’s not exactly news. Kelly has led the last nine polls of the race, according to Real Clear Politics tracker, dating back to last August. If you want to find a survey that showed McSally in the lead, you’d have to go all the way back to last May—when this same pollster had her up by one. The Arizona race is technically a special election to permanently fill the seat held by the interim Repbulican Sen. Jon Kyl, who was appointed to fill the vacancy left by the late Sen. John McCain. (This is confusing, but: McSally lost her 2018 Senate bid to Democratic Kyrsten Sinema in the race to succeed a different retiring Republican, Sen. Jeff Flake, but Republican Gov. Doug Ducey appointed her nonetheless to replace Kyl.) If Democrats are going to take back control of the Senate, they will need to flip at least three Republican seats (four, if you expect Alabama Sen. Doug Jones to lose; five, if that happens and they don’t win the White House). Right now, Kelly is looking like their safest bet.

But there’s another pretty big election in Arizona this fall—the presidential race, where 11 electoral votes are up for grabs. That’s one more than Wisconsin. And the news on that front is, if anything, even more encouraging for Democrats. There have been 13 head-to-head polls between Joe Biden and President Trump in Arizona over the last 14 months, and Trump has led just one of them—by two points in December. In the same OH Predictive Insights survey, Biden also led his opponent by nine points, and was likewise above the 50 percent threshold.

That is, as he might say, a big effing deal. While much of the party’s energy over the last four years has focused on winning back the Midwestern “blue wall,” Arizona—which was more competitive than Ohio in 2016—right now represents a more favorable landscape than that most critical of swing states, Wisconsin. And it has one more electoral vote, to boot. Another point in Arizona’s favor: it has also taken significant steps toward a vote-by-mail system.

So much about the November election is up in the air right now. (Who has the energy to pay attention to polls in a pandemic?) But there are signs, at least, that the next blue wall might just be in the Southwest.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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