Former President Trump is narrowly ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential contest in Arizona, as the Democratic nominee loses ground among women, Hispanics and young voters.

A new Fox News survey of Arizona voters finds Harris trails Trump by 3 percentage points among likely voters in both the two-way matchup (48%-51%) and the expanded ballot that includes third-party candidates (47%-50%, with 3% backing other candidates). While 9 in 10 say their vote choice is locked in, both Harris and Trump have a handful of supporters saying they may change their mind.  

In August, Harris was up by 1 point in the horse race among registered voters (50%-49%), while she’s down by 2 points today (48%-50%). All of these matchups are within the margin of error. 

The 3-point shift among registered voters is mainly due to movement among young voters, women and Hispanics.  

Since August, Harris’ 18-point lead among Hispanics has narrowed to 11 points and her 14-point edge among women is down to 8 points. What was a 13-point advantage for Harris among voters under age 30 is now a 12-point deficit, a 25-point shift. These changes are notable, even given that estimates among subgroups are more volatile.

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Trump tops Harris among Whites without a college degree, rural voters and independents. He has a narrow edge among suburbanites because more suburban men back him than suburban women favor Harris. And, by just a touch, more of his 2020 voters stick with him than Biden’s 2020 voters back Harris.

Harris has strong support among those ages 65 and over, voters with a college degree and urban voters, and still receives majority backing among women and Hispanics. Plus, 1 in 4 non-MAGA Republicans favors Harris over Trump.  

By a 51%-46% margin, Trump leads among new voters, defined as those who haven’t voted in the four most recent elections.  

“Arizona is looking tougher for Harris than a month ago,” says Democratic pollster Chris Anderson, who conducts Fox News surveys with Republican Daron Shaw. “If young voters and Hispanics don’t make a U-turn, it’s hard to see how she walks away with a win.”

More Arizona voters trust Trump than Harris to handle immigration (by 15 points) and the economy (+8). Those are significant leads, and they match where things stood last month — but compared to his June leads over President Biden, Trump’s advantage is down 5 points on immigration and down 7 points on the economy.  

Trump is also seen as being better at making the country safe by 7 points.  

There’s little difference between the candidates on who will better protect democracy (Harris +3), help the middle class (Harris +2), fight for people like you (Harris +2), and bring needed change (Trump +1). 

Harris leads Trump by 15 points on handling abortion, down from her 22-point lead last month. 

More than 7 in 10 Arizona voters favor the state’s proposed constitutional amendment establishing the right to an abortion, including more than two-thirds of independents and half of Republicans. 

The two candidates are about equal in personal favorable ratings. Harris gets net negative marks by 3 points (48% favorable, 51% unfavorable), while Trump’s are negative by 5 points (47%-52%). For the vice-presidential candidates, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s ratings are negative by just 1 point (42%-43%) with 15% unable to rate him. Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s favorable rating is underwater by 7 points (40%-47%) and 12% have no opinion.  

Trump won Arizona in 2016 by about 3.5 percentage points, while Biden’s 2020 victory was by less than half a percentage point.

In the Senate race, Democrat Ruben Gallego tops Republican Kari Lake by more than 10 percentage points: 55%-42% among likely voters and 56%-42% among registered voters. Gallego is preferred across most demographic groups, but women voters are a big part of what gives him the advantage as they back him over Lake by a 23-point margin. He also receives the support of 6 in 10 independents and nearly 2 in 10 Republicans.

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Some 15% of Gallego supporters split their ticket and back Trump in the presidential race. Some of the biggest ticket splitting is among independents, who are 16 points more likely to back Gallego than Harris, and Republicans (10 points more for Gallego). Among those voters favoring Lake, only 3% go for Harris.

Poll-pourri

Early voters are more likely to back Harris by 11 points, while Trump is favored by 30 points among the smaller group of Election Day voters.

Biden’s personal favorability is negative by 21 points, 39% favorable vs. 60% unfavorable. That’s a big decline from four years ago when his ratings were positive by 2 points (June 2020).  

Thirty percent rate the U.S. economy positively, up from 25% who said the same four years ago.          

CLICK HERE FOR TOPLINE AND CROSSTABS

Conducted Sept. 20-24, under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R), this Fox News Poll includes interviews with a sample of 1,021 Arizona registered voters randomly selected from a statewide voter file. Respondents spoke with live interviewers on landlines (147) and cellphones (616) or completed the survey online after receiving a text (258). Results based on the registered voter sample have a margin of sampling error of ±3 percentage points ,and for the subsample of 764 likely voters it is ±3.5 percentage points. Weights are generally applied to age, race, education and area variables to ensure the demographics of respondents are representative of the registered voter population. Likely voters are based on a probabilistic statistical model that relies on past voting history, interest in the current election, age, education, race, ethnicity, church attendance and marital status.

Fox News’ Victoria Balara contributed to this report.

Arizona homeschooling parents are accusing the state of imposing burdensome regulations on families after Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes cracked down on the state’s voucher program requirements this summer.

Homeschooling moms Velia Aguirre and Rosemary McAtee are plaintiffs in a new lawsuit, filed by The Goldwater Institute, against the state of Arizona, Arizona Department of Education and Superintendent Thomas Horne. Aguirre and McAtee participate in the school’s Empowerment Scholarship Account “ESA,” which gives homeschooling families 90% of state taxpayer dollars that would otherwise go to the public school district or charter schools to purchase educational materials, including books and supplemental materials, for their children’s schooling.

The suit alleges that in July, AG Mayes issued “legal threats” to the Department of Education to make sure every ESA purchase had a curriculum tied to it. Goldwater says that the education department is now rejecting reimbursement requests from ESA families for the purchase of “basic educational materials,” including things like pencils and erasers, “unless parents could provide an explicit ‘curricular’ document justifying the use of each specific book title or material for their child.” 

“It’s very hard. Because I’m spending several hours a week developing curriculum for things I’ve never had to develop curriculum for when I was a district employee or being in the program for four years,” Aguirre told Fox News Digital. 

“So it’s cumbersome. It’s really time-consuming. It’s burdensome,” she added. “It feels like I have to present this false narrative of developing a curriculum for erasers or pencils or colored markers.”

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“It’s just odd because the attorney general just seems to lack a lot of knowledge with the whole ESA program entirely. It’s really causing strain, and it feels deliberate, being imposed on families that already have it hard educating children with developmental delays,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre teaches her three boys with special needs at home and draws on her experience as a former public school Special Education teacher to develop lessons, activities and goals tailored to each of her children’s specific needs. But the lawsuit says when she submitted receipts for several educational materials, including the classic novel, “Where the Red Fern Grows;” a periodic table of elements; math and spelling activity books; and pencils and erasers to the department in August, her reimbursement request was denied.

Parents are already required to submit expense receipts for every item purchased with the scholarship funds, the suit says. It alleges the new requirement imposes a burden on parents that “violates state law and state regulations” while adding to the “backlog of tens of thousands of purchase orders awaiting review” and puts a “senseless burden” on parents.

The second plaintiff, Rosemary McAtee, has homeschooled seven of her nine children with funding from the ESA program since 2019. She also had her purchases denied by the state after she bought four books, including the children’s classic “Brown Bear, Brown, Bear What Do You See?,” and a Catholic Encyclopedia for Children. 

Both moms appealed these denials, the suit shows, but the Board of Education denied them, citing the need to provide a formal curriculum that includes these books.

Arizona homeschooling parents in the suit say the state has made their jobs much tougher with new regulations. (iStock)

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“I honestly am kind of afraid to buy anything now because if they can change the rules at the drop of a hat, and break the law, – it does break the law that the legislature put in 2020 — it just leaves me with a question mark of, ‘Am I going to be stuck carrying thousands of dollars that I’m waiting to be reimbursed on, and then they’re going to deny me, even if it meets my contract to my curriculum?’” McAtee told Fox News Digital.

According to Goldwater, Arizona lawmakers added clarifying language in 2020 to the law ensuring supplemental material that is not explicitly tied to a curriculum would not be denied to families in the ESA program. Additionally, they say the State Board of Education has also “approved rules for the program explicitly permitting the purchase of these materials without additional documentation.”

A spokesman for Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office told Fox News Digital that they are simply enforcing the law and the requirement is meant to encourage transparency and accountability in how taxpayer dollars are spent.

“The Attorney General has simply stated what is required by law. The law doesn’t prevent parents from purchasing paper and pencils, but it does require that materials purchased with ESA funds be used for a child’s education. With instances of voucher dollars being spent on things like ski passes, luxury car driving lessons, and grand pianos, it’s clear that providing documentation on spending is essential to prevent the misuse of taxpayer funds. Attorney General Mayes believes Arizonans deserve full transparency and accountability in how their tax dollars are used and will continue to fight for accountability and oversight in the voucher program,” the spokesperson said.