PHOENIX — Over the past two decades, Black people disillusioned by the inequalities that have defined life in other states have moved to Arizona in droves, searching for more opportunities. Still, as transplants have found hope in the battleground state, the ability to build political power has struggled to take root.
The state has emerged as one of the most influential in deciding who occupies the White House, but its surging tide of Black residents stands apart from the well-established Black voting blocs in other swing states where Black communities have flexed their powers for generations. Over the past five national election cycles, Black Arizonans have voted at a lower rate than Black adults in every other swing state except Wisconsin. And for those who do vote, there isn’t a unified party alignment. In 2020, half of Arizona’s Black voters identified as Republican or independent.
As former President Donald Trump continues to have an edge over Vice President Kamala Harris in the Grand Canyon State, in cities like Phoenix, Black voters lack unified political priorities and waver in their voter participation. While all but one of the potential voters Capital B spoke with said they plan to vote, most said a large share of Black people in their life were not as enthusiastic about voting.
Rashad Shabazz, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation, said this has a lot to do with the shifting realities of what Arizona’s Black communities are as the state’s Black population has grown.
“I’m not certain Black politics means the same thing here as we’re accustomed to in the Midwest or Northeast because this is a different place, and people come here for different reasons,” he said, noting that many people move to Arizona to escape segregation and the racist policies that defined the majority-Black enclaves in places like Chicago, Detroit, and New York.
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Even as Arizona’s Black population has grown by roughly 40% since 2010, Black people make up just 5% of the state’s population. But with the 2020 presidential election decided by just 45,000 votes in Arizona, the state’s more than 250,000 voting age Black residents have a consequential say. This is also true in an important U.S. Senate race where Democrat Ruben Gallego is leading Republican Kari Lake, with his advantage steadily outside the polls’ margins of error.
“Within the last 10 to 15 years, the community seems so much more fractured than I’ve ever seen it,” explained Tremaine Jasper, a Phoenix native who operates PhxSoul, a source for Black culture, events, and businesses in the city. Jasper said the economic and cultural divide between new and longtime residents play a role. Data suggests that new residents are more wealthy than Black people born and raised in the state.
“There was a lot more sense of unity and comfortability with who we wanted in power and how to go about it. It just feels fragile now.”
A lack of roots and Black political power
Because all of Arizona’s Black population growth took place after 1980, Black political power and community activism in Phoenix doesn’t have as strong a history as it does in Detroit or Philadelphia.
“We shouldn’t make any assumptions about how Black people are going to vote, or if they’re going to vote at all,” Shabazz said.
Over the past two elections, even as non-white voters have increased, Arizona has had the fifth-starkest voter turnout gap between white and non-white voters. This means white residents continue to make up a disproportionate share of the electorate compared to the size of Arizona’s white population. In particular, white voters who did not graduate from college (the strongest Republican voting bloc) voted at a rate that was 40% higher than non-white voters.
An influx of non-white residents in Arizona helped flip the state blue in 2020, but the state hasn’t elected a Democrat in two consecutive elections since 1948. The same year in 2020, however, Republican candidates for the state legislature garnered 37% of the Black vote in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, and Pima County, the two places where 90% of Black Arizonans live.
Four years later, even as 18 Trump allies have been indicted for their roles in an attempt to overturn the state’s election results, the Black vote is highly contested again.
It’s why Brian Turner, a post office worker who Capital B interviewed on Phoenix Metro’s number 1 bus line, said he is excited to vote for Kamala Harris this election cycle because he wants her to “prove that a woman can run the country.” He said he’s noticed pretty much unanimous support for Harris from Black women around him, but it is “50/50” from Black men. Most major polls have Trump leading in Arizona.
“People move here to maybe afford a house, and go to brunch on the weekends,” said Turner, who moved to Arizona in 2013. “But we need more people to go to events and do our democratic duty.”
Because the growing class of Arizona’s Black residents are not exposed to the same levels of segregation and disinvestment that they experienced in their hometowns, the lore of economic mobility for Black people may contribute to the lack of interest in community organizing and political involvement, residents explained. Polls suggest in states like Arizona and Texas where people are flocking to find the “American Dream” through homeownership, there has been a right-wing shift among younger Black voters. And of the seven swing states, Black people in Arizona have the highest average household income.
Michelle, who moved to Arizona from California to afford a house, said she doesn’t plan on voting “because the political system is divisive” and “it doesn’t bring people together.” She instead would rather focus on supporting her community through volunteer work.
Other potential Black voters told Capital B that the hesitancy in voting is due to political apathy, and, particularly for newer residents, a lack of understanding of the political landscape and plight of Black communities.
Brian Watson, a Phoenix resident since 2015 and videographer, said as Black people move to the state, they’re becoming more spread out geographically, making it harder to build community and political power.
“Black people move here and they gotta use the internet to find where to get their haircut or get good soul food because we’re not actually building in-person communities,” he said. That makes it harder for Black residents to know the political environment around them, he said, and thus less likely to participate electorally.
“We’re not sharing cultural spaces as frequently as we should,” he said, adding that some of that has to do with different visions of the need for community and local power building. “People are afraid to expand what Black politics can be here because for many Black Arizonans, especially new ones, Arizona is already a more convenient place for them than where they came from.”
But as most residents explained, the experiences of Black Arizonans are not monolithic; factors such as gender, socioeconomic status, and immigrant status have significantly impacted political engagement. There are groups like Black Voters Matter, Our Vote Our Voice, and Mass Liberation Arizona that have led voter education workshops and drives in recent weeks trying to bridge the gap.
Shabazz said for this reason, there is still hope for Black Arizonans to develop political power, particularly as the state faces the existential crisis of climate change.
As climate change makes heat waves worse and rapid population growth contributes to Arizona ranking as the state most at risk of running out of water, Black residents feel the worst of the impacts. Roughly 40% of all Americans who died of heat-related illnesses in 2023 were in Arizona, and Black residents were the most likely to die.
“Generationally, Black people have organized around three or four issues: housing, education, and jobs,” Shabazz explained. “I think Arizona allows for a much more expansive political analysis because of this place’s environment and climate. You just can’t be like, ‘housing, jobs, and education.’ That’s simply not gonna cut it because the climate is killing people here and soon it is going to be an issue everywhere.”
The issues that matter most
Residents outlined several issues driving their likelihood of participating in the upcoming presidential election, particularly issues around increasing housing costs, the battle over reproductive rights and public education, and how rising heat and dwindling water sources threaten the future habitability of the state.
Housing: Between 2010 and 2022, rents in Arizona increased by a whopping 72% and homebuying has become out of reach for many people born and raised in the state. Relatedly, falling in line with national trends, Black people are disproportionately unhoused in Phoenix. As housing prices have tripled since 2015, Black people make up one-fourth of the area’s unhoused population, ending up homeless at a rate nearly five times higher than white residents.
Rashaad Thomas, a Phoenix resident, said the stark increase in costs feels deliberate. “It’s like they’re purging the urban climate, clearing the climate of Black people in direct response to our growth.”
Reproductive Rights and Health Care: This November, Arizona voters will decide whether to enshrine abortion access as a right in the Arizona Constitution. The Arizona Abortion Access Act would state that every Arizonan has a fundamental right to abortion up to about the 24th week of pregnancy, with exceptions after that point if a health care professional decides it’s needed to “protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.” The law would also prohibit any law or regulation that interferes with that right.
In South Phoenix, where most of the city’s Black residents are located, there is only one hospital. It is the area that has the city’s worst health outcomes.
“There are no outlets for someone who gets sick here,” said Fatima Muhammad Roque, one of the few Black doulas in Arizona, last year. “It feels like we’re not even expected to keep each other safe and healthy with these circumstances.”
Climate change: In addition to leading the nation in heat-related deaths, Arizona is the fifth-worst state for illnesses related to air pollution. Over the past two years, several Black Arizonans have told Capital B that they believe extreme heat or drought will force them out of the state eventually.
Public education: Arizona is facing a public education crisis that may soon reverberate across the country. The state has dramatically cut funds for public education, instead implementing a school voucher program, which funnels public money into private schools, which often cater to wealthier, predominantly white families. These schools have fewer accountability measures, allowing for exclusionary admission practices and limited access for students of color. As a result, Black, Latino, and Indigenous students are left in underfunded public schools, deepening the racial inequities in education. Project 2025 uses Arizona’s system as a model for what the national K-12 education system should look like.
For Thomas, the system is all about “telling us through our children that we don’t belong here.”
This coverage was made possible by a grant through the URL Collective, a nonprofit supporting local, diverse media. Capital B and URL Collective have partnered to bring you election reporting from grassroots media.