What Is a Competitive District?

What is a competitive district? The easiest way to define this is as a district where either major party has an opportunity to win. Or put more negatively, a competitive district is one that is not “safe” for one party or the other to win; in a safe (uncompetitive) district, the race is essentially over after the primaries.

While there several competitive legislative districts we often hear about, there are other districts that really require a more nuanced description, for instance because of their questionable exclusion from typical lists. LD17 in south Arizona was not expected to be competitive, nor was LD27 in the West Valley. Yet LD17 now has a Democratic Representative, and LD27 came close in 2024 and has a very active campaign this cycle.

Arizona’s 2021 “Official” Definition of Competitive

In 2021, The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) decided on two separate measures for calling a district “competitive.” The first was whether an average of nine selected previous statewide elections, measured over each putative district, yielded a vote spread between the two major parties that was within 7 percent. A secondary measure was whether both parties had won at least one of the nine chosen (with a closer to even split suggesting greater competitiveness). 

By those measures, there were only 5 competitive districts: LDs 2, 4,9,13, and 16.However, the measures used, based on previous results, were not claimed to be predictive of performance in future elections – as financial managers say, “past performance does not guarantee future returns.” And in fact, LDs 17 and 27 have had results since then that were in the competitive range (with a single shot D win in LD17, and a close D loss in LD27), while LD23, which was quite reasonably scored as a safe Democratic district, has proven to be competitive for Republicans in recent elections. 

But really, it depends

Actual vote share in elections is dependent on many more factors than prior performance. The national “mood” is a key one – it’s typically against the President’s party in midterms, even more so now with the price of goods broadly visible as large signs on every gas station. Then there is candidate quality, hard to define crisply but clearly seen, almost independent of ideological leaning. And finally, campaign effectiveness. Is the campaign clearly establishing both the name and the brand of the candidate, especially in contrast to the opponent(s)? Other “fundamentals” include incumbency and fundraising.

In 2024, the national political environment was very much a dominant factor. For instance, In Phoenix/Scottsdale/Paradise Valley’s LD4, Democrats had had good success in 2022 – for instance, in the state Senate, Christine Marsh defeated her Republican opponent by 1%, while the IRC measure had the district leaning Republican by about 2%, a 3% difference. But in 2024, Senator Marsh lost by almost 4 points. She was the same energetic campaigner she had been in 2022, with an active volunteer base. But the public was extremely sour about the Democratic Party that year, both because of higher prices and a confused Presidential campaign. Campaigns across the country saw a swing to the right of similar amounts or more, in blue, red, and purple districts.

Despite that trend, some Democrats did well; Senator Gallego was an obvious example, winning statewide in 2024, a tough year. He did have an advantage in running against a terrible candidate, Kari Lake. But also, “single shot” AZ House candidates in LD17 (Kevin Volk) and LD27 (Deborah Howard) improved vote share over the 2022 Democratic candidates. Democrats in all the other competitive districts did more poorly than in 2022.

What about the 2026 Election?

In 2026, the “swing” is likely to be positive for Democrats. With an unpopular president and a disgruntled electorate (particularly over the increased cost of living), Democratic candidates all over the state are expected to do better than before. But this would particularly be true for those candidates that in some way beat the odds last time around.

That being said, we don’t know how much influence these national trends will have locally, and 90 days out from Election Day, even those trends could change. But if we had to guess now, these are the legislative districts we should keep an eye on: 2, 4, 9, 13, 16, 17, 23, and 27.