Arizona's Hispanic voters are heading into this election focused on one thing: their wallets.
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Two recent polls on Arizona's second-largest ethnic group show that about 70% of Hispanic voters rank affordability as their top priority — driven by concerns about cost of living, jobs and wages, and housing.
Nearly 1 in 4 Arizona adults of voting age is Hispanic — 24%. Last election, they made up an estimated 27% of the electorate, exceeding their share of the voting-age population for the first time. Every election since 2016 before that, the figure sat between 15% and 19%.
A poll taken in late August showed Hispanic voters backing Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs over Republican Andy Biggs by 57 to 20. If anything close to that holds, it would be the widest Democratic margin at the top of the ticket since 2020. For comparison, Hobbs took 51% in 2022, and Kamala Harris got 54% in 2024.
When asked for their top issue, more than a third of Hispanic voters cited cost of living and inflation. A fifth pointed to jobs and wages. Thirteen percent said housing. Added together, about 70% put affordability first.
Those concerns extend to everyday expenses. Rising gas prices are a problem for 80% of respondents. Nearly 70% say the same of their weekly grocery bill. Housing costs and electric bills are cited by 60%.
While those economic worries are shared across ethnic groups, a sharp divide emerges on immigration enforcement. Two-thirds of Hispanic voters — 65% — oppose Arizona cities cooperating with ICE. By contrast, 54% of white voters support such cooperation. On the president's handling of deportations, the two groups are 10 points apart. More than half of Hispanic voters believe people are being deported whether or not they committed a crime.
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