Early voting kicked off in the battleground state of Arizona on Wednesday, the first of the major swing states to allow voters to cast their ballots at their regular polling places ahead of Election Day.

In the 2020 presidential election, nearly 90% of Arizona voters cast their ballots early. And this time around, the two major presidential candidates are not taking a single vote in the Grand Canyon State for granted.

Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris is set to hold a rally in Phoenix on Thursday, and Republican candidate former President Donald Trump plans to hold a rally in the state on Sunday. Both candidates dispatched their running mates, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, to the state on Wednesday, the first day of early voting, underscoring how importantly both campaigns view the state in November.

“Arizona was really a reliably red state for a long time. Republicans typically won here in presidential races and governor races, senate races, across the board. But what we've been seeing over the last ... 10 or even 20 years are Republicans have been winning at smaller and smaller margins,” explained Samara Klar, a professor at the University of Arizona. 

Joe Biden won the state by a little more than 10,000 votes over Trump four years ago. In recent years, the state has sent two Democratic U.S. Senators to Washington, though Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who is retiring in November, left the party in 2022 to become an independent. The state also elected a Democratic governor, in addition to other statewide offices like secretary of state and attorney general.

Still, Republicans did make gains in the House of Representatives in 2022, gaining two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, winning six out of Arizona’s nine seats in the lower chamber of Congress

Klar says that recent Democratic gains are in spite of the fact that Republican voters still outnumber their Democratic counterparts.

“About 36% of voters in Arizona are registered as Republicans, and about 29 to 30% are registered as Democrats. Republicans are still in the numerical plurality, but we have this growing percentage of people, now up to 35%, who are registered as independents. And that may have something to do with these shifting electoral outcomes here in our state,” she explained.

Maricopa County, the fourth-most populous county in the country, with over 4.4 million people living within its boundaries, is a bellwether for the state. It went for Trump in 2016, and Biden in 2020.

On the first day of early in-person voting, Spectrum News spoke to a number of residents who were casting their ballot about the issues driving them to the polls.

“Abortion. As far as I'm concerned, abortion is nothing more than legalized murder,” said Steve McQueen, an army veteran who has lived in the area for over 50 years. “Now I can understand somebody get an abortion in case it was rape, incest or something like that. But abortion is not birth control. You have other methods that control. If you don't want to have a child, don't get pregnant.”

Tara Logsdon, who designs restaurant interiors and has lived in the area for a majority of her life, says she’s a liberal who said she doesn’t “believe in abortion” but that she doesn’t “think it's the government's job to regulate people's bodies." She said she was still supporting Democratic candidates despite having a different view on one of the party’s top issues in this cycle. 

“I would love for Arizona to turn blue. I think it would be amazing,” she said.

As for why Logsdon showed up on the first day of in-person voting, the answer was more simple. 

“I think it takes a load off my chest to get it done, and it just feels good to know that I've cast my vote, I've done my research. I've [done] everything that I can possibly do for this election to me, is in that vote.”

Greg Sober and his wife showed up together to cast their ballot in downtown Phoenix. He said it’s nice to see that both Harris and Trump are actively trying to earn the vote of Arizonans. 

“I think Arizona tends to be, you know, kind of a cowboy state. And, there's a proud tradition, in the cowboy culture of being independent,” said Sober. “It's been nice that we're attracting a lot of attention nationally because I think we are important.”

While the visits by the candidates later this week won’t sway his vote, Sober said he believes those undecided voters want to hear more from the candidates about actual policies.

“I think the political platitude stuff that's been going on, it's difficult sometimes to listen to politicians because they don't say anything,” he said. “I think, the candidates that are running today, if they have specific things that they can put forward, I think that's that's important.”

Recent polling shows a tight race in Arizona. According to a polling average from aggregator FiveThirtyEight, Trump leads Harris by about 1% in the state.