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Arizona State University public affairs professor Dr. Thom Reilly said the independent voting bloc is pushing the state out of it's once-ruby red home on the political spectrum -- and right into deep purple territory.

\"What we're seeing is is general frustration, to the divisiveness that is occurring in Washington and across the United States, and people are searching for a different way,\" he said.

That is especially true for Latino voters who are increasingly becoming a larger percentage of the state's population and voting bloc.

In 2019, according to Pew Research Center, Maricopa County was home to the fourth-largest growing Hispanic or Latino population in the entire country. Those who identify as Hispanic or Latino make up nearly 30% of the county's population, and the median age of Hispanics in the entire state is lower than it is in many states where the population supersedes 1 million Hispanic residents.

Pew also reports that the economic downturn stemming from the pandemic has hit Latinos and Hispanics especially hard: The unemployment rate for Hispanics increased from 4.8% in February to 18.5% in April and dropped back to 14.5% in June.

Trump narrowly won the county in 2016 by only three points and two years later when Sinema was running against McSally, she carried the county with 51 points, with McSally trailing behind at 46.8.

\"PHOTO:
Tom Brenner/Reuters
PHOTO: President Donald Trump gestures as he stands on a White House balcony speaking to supporters gathered on the South Lawn for a campaign rally that the White House is calling a "peaceful protest" in Washington, Oct. 10, 2020.
>

As the race to the White House continues down an increasingly polarized path, some Latino voters are without a major party to call their own, especially as the candidates squabble over immigration policies, which are oftentimes top of mind issues.

Karilyn Van Oosten immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a young adult. While she has cast Democratic ballots in the past, she wants the party to know not to take Latino voters for granted.

\"They're just taking it for granted and thinking, 'Oh, hey, well, they're Latinos, and they're going to go ahead and lean Democrat.' That's not the case,\" she said.

\"A lot of the Democratic Party has been neglecting to really address that issue of immigration,\" Van Oosten added. \"And that's why we see that a lot of the Latino voters are really just going -- they're really up for grabs and they are having a hard time making a decision of which way to go, because no one is addressing the issues that matter to them most.\"

But despite what may appear as a shift to the left in Arizona, some independent voters are re-evaluating their lack of support for the president, like Barbi Rouen, who also voted for Johnson in 2016.

\"Since coronavirus has come out, our economy has stayed fairly stable. And that to me is astonishing especially considering the number of people who are out of jobs because they can't go in,\" she said. \"(Trump)'s allowing the states to make the decisions for themselves, which is what it should be.\"

With less than a month until Election Day, and millions of ballots already in the mail using the state's long-established and often-utilized mail-in ballot system, the final push to pull voters toward one major party on the general election ballot is more important than ever.

Polling consistently shows a close presidential race among Democrats and Republicans. The last ABC News / Washington Post poll out of Arizona saw Biden at 49% and Trump at 47%. But among Independent voters, the numbers tell a different story. A New York Times / Siena College poll found Biden up 25 points among Independents.

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