You start skewing elections, you end up skewing reality

Here’s a query that’s been rattling around some people’s heads for the past week: is Arizona still a red state?

(“Todos somos Arizona!” – we’re all Arizona, originally from here.)

So, far the answer has been a resounding “no” from major media and polling outfits. Pew Hispanic makes that case in the most factual way possible, by compiling exit polls from various states and comparing them. Arizona fits into the same demographic class as North Carolina, more or less – with a White majority of which at most a third support Democratic candidates of color. An earlier portion of the same article notes that in spite of having one of the most conservative White majorities, Arizona has one of the largest Latin@ minorities of any US state.

Still, it’s worth noting that the same exit polls pegged the national Latin@ vote at 10 percent of all voters, which is funny, since they’re supposed to be 12.2 percent of us. Of course, it’s hard to say how much of that gap is just the product of voter apathy, as it always is, but noticing that small gap that may be important in places like Arizona, bring to mind the fact that hundreds of thousands of (mostly Latin@) ballots have yet to be counted.

These discrepancies and all the other blatant efforts to fix the electoral results, beg the question though: how will we know if Arizona is still a red state?