US elections: Trump’s campaign explodes in the first Fox News call in Arizona

A major setback against Donald Trump has been reported, and Joe Biden has become the second Democrat to remove the key state of Arizona from the battlefield since 1952.

Fox News called Biden’s victory in the state, but Trump’s team responded, saying it is too early to call with more than a million votes yet to be counted.

The New York Times gives Biden a 53.6 percent chance of winning the state to Trump’s 45 percent, with about three-quarters of Arizona’s votes already counted.

It’s a result the US president may not have foreseen, considering he beat Hillary Clinton in Arizona by a moderately comfortable four percent margin in 2016.

However, Jason Miller, Trump’s senior adviser, has said it is still “too early to call Arizona.”

Republican Senate spokeswoman Natalie Johnson called it “pure conjecture and incredibly irresponsible.”

Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey said it was “too early to call an election.”

“In Arizona, we protect Election Day. We are going to count the votes, all the votes, before we make any statements,” he said.

What does this mean for the election result

There may be 50 states in America, but when the votes are counted, only a handful of them, including Arizona, decide who wins the presidential election.

In this election, 15 states fall into the category of “undecided state” or “battlefield state”, which means that Donald Trump or Joe Biden could possibly win them.

As for the rest, we already know who will win them: Trump has no chance in Democratic Party strongholds like New York and California, for example, while he’s probably unbeatable in heavily Republican territory, like Alabama or Oklahoma.

With a value of 11 electoral votes, Arizona has only voted for a Democratic candidate once since 1952: Bill Clinton, in 1996.

While that may not seem like the voting pattern of an indecisive state, Arizona was high on the line in this election, with Trump only once leading Biden in the state’s average poll.