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Citizens of Arizona on their way to the polling station
Photo: Larry Price / AP
Perhaps the end of Republican rule over Arizona began in November 2016 when Joe Arpaio was voted out of office after 24 years.
Arpaio was a sheriff in Maricopa County, the largest county in the country.
He called himself the toughest sheriff in America.
He locked prisoners in the scorching heat in tent cities and put iron chains on the feet of female prisoners.
Arpaio was Arizona - until suddenly it wasn't anymore.
Luis Avila locates the change earlier.
Ten years ago, the Democratic Party began to systematically build up a voter base, Avila says on the phone.
As a community organizer in Phoenix, he helps immigrants prepare for party and government offices.
Half a million new voters
"We worked all year round, not just like we used to do in election years," he says.
"We have registered half a million new voters in ten years. We have forged a coalition of young people, urban voters, and Latino and other minority groups."
That coalition should lead Democrats across the country to victories.
But as these elections have shown, in some places it is more a wish than a reality.
In Arizona she helped Joe Biden and his party win.
Before Biden, Bill Clinton was the only Democratic president in Arizona to win in the past 68 years.
Trump was still almost four percentage points ahead in 2016.
And not only that. For the first time since the 1950s, Arizona sends two Democratic senators to Washington.
Former astronaut Mark Kelly clearly defeated Republican incumbent Martha McSally.
This is not just a result of the building work that the party has done here.
The state has changed fundamentally in the past 30 years and with it the political landscape.
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Ex-astronaut and future Senator Mark Kelly
Photo: CHENEY ORR / REUTERS
In some places, Arizona looks like the American frontier is still being defended by pioneers.
It is not for nothing that the "Museum of the West" stands here, which means the Wild West.
Arizona is changing rapidly
Other regions, on the other hand, have seen breathtaking developments.
The greater Phoenix area is one of the fastest growing regions in the United States.
Some of the newcomers come from the Midwest.
It is people who flee the icy winters of their homeland.
Many also come from California, where life now costs so much that fewer and fewer citizens can afford it.
They are middle-class people who are not tied to a party.
And then there are the immigrants from Mexico, from Central and South America.
The Latinos now make up almost a third of the population.
Activists like Avila have built a wide network to win them over to the Democrats.
According to initial surveys, Latinos voted over 70 percent for Biden in 2020.
The party has also learned from its mistakes.
Hillary Clinton largely ignored Arizona in 2016 under the false belief that she didn't need the state.
Biden and his vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, on the other hand, have held election rallies in Arizona and invested millions in campaigning.
20,000 votes saved
The Democrats have gradually built a powerful grassroots organization.
This has enabled them to take action against voter suppression, which is also widespread in Arizona.
According to the party, in 2016 around 20,000 votes that were supposed to be counted as invalid were subsequently declared valid.
The party was well prepared for 2020.
In the end, a local factor may also have contributed to Biden's victory.
The late Republican Senator John McCain was revered by Arizona residents across party lines.
Trump, on the other hand, had said about him, among other things, that McCain was not a hero because he had been captured in the Vietnam War.
Trump on the highly decorated aviator: "I like people who weren't caught, okay?"
Even Republicans were outraged.
McCain's widow Cindy even used Twitter to vote for Biden:
His former advisor, Mike Murphy, said Biden's election was McCain's belated revenge.
The sentence can be heard over and over again in the election programs of CNN and the surveyed experts.
But the reasons for Arizona tipping go deeper.
"What we have built is stable," says Avila.
"That will outlast this election."
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