Nik Popli in Time Magazine:
There’s no state that political pundits will be watching more closely this fall than Arizona. Voters in one of the nation’s biggest electoral battlegrounds are set to determine the outcome of a tossup Senate race, a pair of close congressional seats, and the winner of its 11 Electoral College votes—and now a recent court ruling has ensured abortion will be an animating issue at the ballot box. After the state Supreme Court decided on Tuesday to bring back a 160-year-old near total ban on the procedure, Arizona has effectively been thrust into the center of the national abortion debate that is expected to dominate the upcoming presidential election and once again test Republicans’ messaging strategy after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“I don’t think it can be overstated the impact this week’s ruling will have on the November election,” says Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based Republican strategist who predicts the key battleground state now leans blue. “Everything that you thought was conventional wisdom about Arizona was thrown out the window overnight.” Democrats have already seized on the ruling to transform the 2024 race into another referendum on abortion rights, blaming former President Donald Trump for overturning the constitutional right to abortion and encouraging disaffected Democrats in the state to turn out in November.
More here.