In 2026, we’re aiming to build a new pro-democracy trifecta in Arizona, by winning new majorities in each chamber. To achieve this goal, we need to flip four seats in the House and three in the Senate.
Since 2018, The States Project’s work has kept the balance of power close in Arizona. In 2024, Arizona saw the biggest swing toward Trump of any battleground state. While he won Arizona by 6 points, 15 of the 18 potential tipping point seats we fueled across both chambers were decided by less than 5 percent.
In the Senate, if 3,407 votes had changed across 2 seats, the chamber would be tied. In the House, just 4,253 votes changing across 3 seats would have tied the chamber. Our work helped keep a new trifecta in the state within striking distance.
We know flipping these chambers in 2026 will be challenging, and that’s why we’ve already hit the ground running. We’re already working with our partners on the ground to recruit the best candidates to run in the districts that will decide governing power, and powering data-backed tactics to understand what issues matter most to voters.
Despite strong national headwinds in 2024, our work helped keep the balance of power close enough for lawmakers in the minority to make a meaningful difference in the legislature.
In the 2025 legislative session, as rightwing lawmakers in the state pushed to gut public education funding, lawmakers in the minority worked across the aisle to hold the line. This resulted in substantial new investments in classroom books and computers, free school meals to ensure no child goes hungry, and increased funding for schools that serve lower-income families.
Additionally, lawmakers in the minority were able to advocate for the largest investment in childcare made in the state in the last decade, cutting the waitlist for childcare support in half. This gives thousands more working parents the opportunity to stay in the workforce while ensuring their children are in a safe, nurturing environment.
Plus, even from the minority, lawmakers were able to beat back rightwing plans that would have gutted the state’s Medicaid program and blocked thousands of Arizonans’ access to healthcare.
By flipping four seats in the House and three in the Senate in 2026, we can give the lawmakers who delivered these victories to working families the governing power they need to meaningfully improve millions more lives. The work starts now.
Though ground was lost in both chambers, we were able to keep the balance of power close despite strong national headwinds. TSP invested 13 times more than the next largest national funder of the caucus and candidates in Arizona. Without our intervention, even more seats could have been lost to the rightwing.
By holding ground in both chambers, we helped keep the balance of power within one seat — the narrowest majorities the rightwing has held in decades in the state legislature. These close margins became critical in the 2024 legislative session, when lawmakers in Arizona’s minorities were able to successfully repeal the state’s archaic 1864 abortion ban, which made no exceptions for rape or incest, by creating enough public pressure to convince two rightwing lawmakers in the Senate and three in the House to vote for the repeal.
We helped gain one new seat in the State Senate, putting the chamber within one seat of a power shift. We also helped flip two new seats in the House, but incumbent losses meant that chamber margins remained unchanged — a four-seat gain — from 2018. This was the closest pro-democracy lawmakers have come to ending the rightwing’s majorities in the legislature since 1966.
In our first election in Arizona, we helped gain four seats in the State House, sending four new state representatives to Phoenix.
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State lawmakers have the power to enact policies that can protect millions of Americans, and the overall direction of the country, from the worst impacts of a second Trump presidency.
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