AZ Is Trump Country!

It sure looks like Arizona is Trump country.

Sen. Ted Cruz certainly has better organization and more endorsements among state lawmakers—but none of that appears to matter in 2016. Trump has very little in the way of traditional campaign infrastructure—although he does have endorsements from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former governor Jan Brewer—and while there’s not a lot of polling data, what little we’ve seen suggests Trump is headed to an easy victory next week.

On the Democratic side, the few polls we've seen shows Hillary Clinton is likely to beat Bernie Sanders on Tuesday, although Bernie is hardly giving up the state. He and his wife Jane have been making appearances all week long (including one unfortunate photo op with Jane with Arpaio at the notorious tent city; Bernie denounced Arpaio yesterday, saying he ambushed his wife.)

Bernie’s supporters are vocal and energized. He’s got the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, who is one of the few sitting members of Congress, and plenty of enthusiastic supporters who will turn out to today’s rally in Tucson.

But the Clintons have been popular in Arizona; In 1996, Bill was the only Democratic presidential candidate in the last half-century to win the Grand Canyon State and Hillary won Arizona in the ’08 presidential primary. Hillary has surrogates like Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild and 2014 gubernatorial candidate Fred DuVal, who worked in the Clinton White House.

A new Merrill Poll released yesterday had some interesting general-election match ups: Trump and Hillary are tied among Arizona voters at 38 percent each, while Bernie had a 3-percentage-point lead over Trump at 39 percent vs. 36 percent—which all means that a Trump candidacy could put Arizona in play in the general election.