Phoenix – The Maricopa County Elections The bureau on Thursday reviewed election results and shared the total number of votes cast and other data for the 2024 election in Maricopa County. Elections Director Scott Jarrett and Assistant County Manager Zach Shira briefed the media.

“Voter turnout was 80.34%, which was also a very high turnout compared to previous elections,” Jarrett said. “So going back to the 1970s, there have only been three election years where voter turnout was over 80%: 1980, when Ronald Reagan won, 2020, and now 2024. We got very good results from voters in Maricopa County.”

Maricopa County is the third largest election jurisdiction in the country. A total of 2,078,460 votes were cast in the presidential election out of 2,587,197 registered voters in the county, the second-highest total in county history.

Early voters accounted for 53%. 11% came from in-person early voting. 30% were discarded ballots. Twelve percent voted on Election Day, and less than 1% cast provisional ballots. The number of in-person early voters exceeded 210,000, the highest in Maricopa County history, and 631,000 people dropped out.

Republican Donald Trump won the county by 41,425 votes in 2016 but lost by 45,109 votes in 2020, so he regained it in this election. This year, Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the county by 71,515 votes.

There was another close race in the county between Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake, with both men vying for a key seat for majority control of the Senate.

Gallego won Arizona, leaving the state with two Democratic senators: Gallego and Mark Kelly, who was not up for re-election. Gallego won Maricopa County by a margin of 105,301 votes (5.18 percentage points).

This year, there were four states that Trump won but had senators from the opposing party: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

The Arizona county had a two-page ballot with 13 ballot items, which took significantly longer to process.

“While your team successfully conducted the November general election, they conducted it under conditions not seen since 2006,” Mr. Shira told election officials. “This variation doubled the amount of paperwork processed in this election. This may not sound like a big deal, but in most elections, Realizing that only one page was used, this year we effectively doubled the turnout our team processed in the 2024 election by using two pages per voter.”

Maricopa County hired 4,300 temporary workers for this election. 2,700 poll workers, 800 Maricopa County Tally and Election Center workers, and 800 county employees received a total of 19,800 hours of training both online and in-person. In addition to the temporary staff, there were also hundreds of political observers, whom Jarrett thanked.

“Our party observers are truly volunteers,” Jarrett said. “They don’t get paid for their duties, but they still show up. We have observers throughout every process at our central counting facility, whether it’s during early voting or on Election Day, we have monitors at almost every turn. I visited the polling station.

Maricopa County had 246 polling places on Election Day, with an average distance of less than 3 miles. “Wait times at vote centers averaged about 10 to 11 minutes across all locations,” Jarrett said.

The statewide canvass will be held Monday morning. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes will announce the statewide 2024 certified election results.