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    ‘If Harris wins, it’s because of abortion’: election tests fallout from Roe reversal

    Leslie Lemus’s top issue in the 2024 election is probably the economy. But she has a close second: “Them fucking with abortion.”Really, for the 26-year-old Arizona native, the two issues are one and the same. On Monday, she got an abortion at Camelback Family Planning, one of the last abortion clinics in Arizona, in large part because Lemus feels like she can’t financially care for a child right now.“I look at the world and it’s not very pretty. I’m not ready for that yet, to bring a child into the world right now, where the economy is not OK,” said Lemus, who said she lived paycheck to paycheck. Some months, she has to choose between making her car payments and paying off her credit card debt. “Everybody’s struggling left and right.”View image in fullscreenLemus is registered to vote in Maricopa county, which is home to 60% of the Arizona electorate and may determine whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the valuable swing state. Harris has made access to reproductive rights a key part of her policy platform – particularly as a contrast to Trump, who appointed three of the US supreme court justices who overturned Roe v Wade and who has toggled between branding himself as a champion of reproductive rights and as “the most pro-life president”.Lemus is a passionate supporter of Harris, who she calls “my homegirl”.Majorities of Americans have backed abortion access and Roe v Wade for decades, but it was rarely their top issue in the voting booth. Now that the US supreme court has overturned Roe, permitting more than a dozen states to ban almost all abortions and several more to ban it at six, 12, or – as in Arizona – 15 weeks, abortion may become the deciding issue of the 2024 election. It is now the most important issue for women under 45, like Lemus.“If Harris wins the election, it will be because of abortion and women voting for her in large part because of that issue,” said Tresa Undem, a pollster who’s been surveying people about abortion for more than two decades.On Monday, Camelback had about 40 patients to see; at least one had traveled in from Texas, which bans almost all abortions. Visitors to the lobby were greeted by a sign urging them to register to vote while they waited for their abortion. The sign advised: “The health of our democracy is in our hands.”‘That gives me hope’On Tuesday, Arizona will become one of 10 states where voters will decide whether to amend their state constitutions to add or expand abortion protections. (In one of those states, Nebraska, voters will vote on both a ballot measure that could expand abortion rights and on the nation’s sole anti-abortion measure.) Five of those states, including Arizona, have some kind of abortion ban on the books. If any of the measures supporting abortion rights pass, it would be the first time that a state has overturned a post-Roe v Wade ban.Democrats have long hoped these measures would boost turnout among their base, but the rosy polling for the measures in steadfastly red states indicates that a significant swath of voters are essentially splitting their votes by supporting both abortion rights and Republicans, the party that helped engineer Roe’s downfall. Although the measure looks likely to pass in Arizona, for example, polling suggests that Trump will win the state.View image in fullscreenJulio Morera helped collect signatures at the Arizona state fair in order to get the measure on the ballot. His group’s booth, he recalled, was set up next to a man who was hawking rightwing memorabilia adorned with eagles, guns and the slogan “Don’t Tread On Me”. When asked to sign the petition, the man demurred. “I got customers to think about,” he said.But at the very end of the fair, Morera said, the man added his signature.“That gives me hope that this is gonna pass,” Morera said. “There are quite a few people that may not be Democrats or left-leaning who would support this access to abortion.”A vote for Trump, however, may ultimately cancel out a vote for a ballot measure. If Trump wins the presidency, he will be able to skirt Congress and use a 19th-century anti-vice law known as the Comstock Act to ban the mailing of all abortion-related materials – which would result in a de facto national abortion ban and render these measures’ successes moot.Project 2025, an influential policy playbook for the next conservative administration, suggests using the Comstock Act to at least ban the mailing of abortion pills, which account for roughly two-thirds of US abortions. It also suggests rolling back privacy protections for abortion patients and reshaping the nation’s largest family planning program, which would curtail access to contraception, among a bevy of other anti-abortion policies.Harris, meanwhile, has forcefully defended abortion rights. “Over these past two years, the impact of Trump abortion bans has been devastating,” she told a rally in Texas in October. “We see the horrific reality that women and families face every single day.”For Lemus, abortion bans all come down to one thing: “Men being in control of women.”View image in fullscreenThe economy was not the only reason that Lemus sought an abortion on Monday. She is also worried about the mental toll of having a child. At 18, Lemus gave birth to a son who was born prematurely and died just a month after birth.“I was there with all the medical stuff, seeing my child in the incubator until he passed away,” she said quietly. Eight years later, Lemus is not ready to have another one.“We fought so hard to have choices,” she said. “Why do they feel like we can’t have a choice?”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

    When do polls close?

    How the electoral college works

    Where is abortion on the ballot?

    Senate and House races to watch

    Lessons from the key swing states

    Trump v Harris on key issues

    What’s at stake in this election

    What to know about the US election More

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    'I can have a voice': Latino voters set for decisive role in key Arizona county

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    Even before she could vote, Imelda Quiroz Beltran had a goal for this election: to register as many Latino voters in Maricopa county as possible – and make sure they cast their ballots.
    Every day for months, she has gone door to door with the non-profit Mi Familia Vota, undeterred by the searing desert sun – zipping across Phoenix’s sprawling concrete-paved neighborhoods in search of eligible voters.
    And then the day came when Beltran registered herself – after she became a naturalized citizen this year.
    “Finally, I can have a voice,” she said. “And this year, it is so important that we all have a voice.”
    Maricopa – which includes Phoenix – is the fastest-growing county in the US. Of its nearly 4.5 million residents, one-third identify as Latino, according to census data.
    While Arizona has voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election but one since 1952, this year, political strategists and pollsters are predicting that Latino voters in Maricopa could play a decisive role in electing Joe Biden to the White House and Democrats up and down the ballot.
    “Whoever wins the Latino vote, is going to win Maricopa county. And whoever wins Maricopa county is going to win Arizona,” said Joseph Garcia, director of Chicanos Por La Causa Action Fund, a non-profit based in Phoenix. “And whoever wins Arizona is likely to win the White House.” More

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    The Arizona county that could decide the future of Trump – and America

    For years, Carlos Garcia would grab his bullhorn each afternoon and head downtown to the office of Joe Arpaio, the brash, hardline, anti-immigrant Maricopa county sheriff who became known as “the Donald Trump of Arizona”.
    When Garcia’s protests began in 2007, just a handful of devoted activists joined him. A conservative firebrand, Arpaio was re-elected every four years by the mostly white residents of the state’s most populous county. He was seemingly untouchable.
    But as Arpaio’s crusade against immigrants intensified, the backlash grew. “We literally went from five to 200,000 people,” Garcia said of the protests.
    On 8 November 2016, the same night Donald Trump won the White House, Arizona finally ousted Arpaio. After nearly a quarter-century in power, the sheriff was undone by Latinos, young progressives and white voters who Garcia believes “felt shame over Maricopa’s reputation” as a hostile and intolerant place.
    interactive
    Just as Arpaio’s tenure foreshadowed Trump’s national rise, the same forces that expelled the sheriff in Maricopa county appear to have flourished across the country as the president pursued his own hardline agenda. And now, those forces – catalyzed by the coronavirus pandemic – may seal the president’s fate in next week’s US election.
    “We are a community that has suffered through Trump-like policies for such a long time,” said Garcia, who was elected to Phoenix city council in 2018. This year, Latinos and others are mobilizing to defeat the “Arpaio in the White House”.
    The future of America
    Maricopa county, which encompasses Arizona’s capital, Phoenix, and blossoming rings of surrounding suburbs, has nearly 4.5 million residents and dominates the state politically. One third of Maricopa residents identify as Latino, according to US census data. More