The biggest fights of the 2024 election are all converging in Arizona

Tuesday’s Arizona Supreme Court ruling upholding a 160-year-old, near-total ban on abortion sent a shock through the state — and cemented its place at the center of politics in 2024.

Arizona and its 11 electoral votes will be critical in the race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Voters will decide critical races for Senate and House with both chambers closely divided. The state looks set to have an abortion measure on the November ballot, putting a stark policy choice directly before voters.

All of this will be happening amid years-long fights over election procedures and immigration that are still running hot. And the state’s rapidly changing demographics highlight many of the major trends buffeting U.S. politics

Arizona has the largest Latino population share of any core battleground state, according to the Census Bureau; the nation’s biggest battleground county in Maricopa County, a former Republican stronghold where more than 2 million people voted in 2020 and Biden narrowly won; increasingly MAGA-fied rural counties racing in the other direction; and the nation’s biggest university by in-person enrollment in Arizona State University.

In short, Arizona will show how different groups are grappling with the most pressing issues in the 2024 election — and could decide the balance of power in Washington next year and beyond. The presidential campaign there was decided by just 10,000 votes in 2020, and Biden and Trump’s campaigns already have their eyes on the state: Vice President Kamala Harris announced a Friday trip to Arizona hours after the state Supreme Court’s abortion decision.

“You understand how important that majority is in the U.S. Senate, right?” Republican Kari Lake asked the