Fox News has called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden. Photo / AP
Fox News has called the state of Arizona for Joe Biden. Photo / AP
A huge upset against Donald Trump has been reported, with Joe Biden becoming only the second Democrat to take out the key battleground state of Arizona since 1952.
Fox News called Biden's victory in the state, but the Trump team has fired back, saying it is too early to callwith more than one million votes still to count.
The New York Times gives Biden a 53.6 per cent chance of winning the state to Trump's 45 per cent, with roughly three quarters of Arizona's votes already counted.
It's an outcome the US President may not have foreseen – considering he beat Hillary Clinton in Arizona by a moderately comfortable margin of four per cent in 2016.
2/ We only need 61% of the outstanding, uncounted Election Day votes in Arizona to win.
These votes are coming from “our counties,” and the 61% figure is very doable based on what our other Election Day votes are looking like.@FoxNews should retract their call immediately.
It’s far too early to call the election in Arizona. Election Day votes are not fully reported, and we haven’t even started to count early ballots dropped off at the polls. In AZ, we protected Election Day. Let’s count the votes — all the votes — before making declarations.
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: 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 Trump only once leading Biden in the state's polling average.
