Donald Trump wins the White House, and Arizona doesn’t figure into it

While the winner of Arizona’s 11 electoral votes has yet to be decided, the Grand Canyon state won’t make a difference in this year’s presidential election. Multiple news organizations have projected that former President Donald Trump is expected to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris and regain the White House.

Things were trending poorly long before Fox News and others called Pennsylvania for Trump, giving him the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. In swing state after swing state, Harris underperformed the already-thin margins by which President Joe Biden won in 2020.

Early in the night, attendees at the Arizona Democratic Party’s election night event at the Hilton Phoenix Resort at the Peak mostly remained optimistic. Several told Phoenix New Times they were “excited” and still “hopeful” about the results of the race.

However, on a patio outside the watch party’s ballroom, three women stood around a small high-top round table having an intense conversation. They were worried about the results from other states and about what was to come.

“A lot of people are still, for some reason, voting for Trump,” Cheree Sutten told New Times at around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday night. “It just kind of blows our minds with the felonies he has against him.”

Edugie Idehen Johnson was still hopeful of a Harris win. “We have put a lot of energy into this,” she said. “We’ve been to the rallies, we have felt the energy of how America should be and that’s the future that we’re looking forward to.”

That future won’t come to pass. And a Trump future is one that Sutten said she’d move away from.

“I’m going to be going to another country,” Sutten said, criticizing the former president as selfish and running to escape criminal charges. “Why even be an American citizen? What are we standing for?”

As of early Wednesday morning, an estimated 80% of Arizona’s precincts had reported results, with Trump holding a more than 31,000-vote lead over Harris. Winning the state is looking less and less likely, though thousands of ballots still awaited counting.

If they even matter.