First, a little background. We live in a beautiful red county (Yavapai) in the battleground state of Arizona. Our house is close to the town of Sedona, which straddles the county line between Yavapai and Coconino counties, but it’s not really there. Although tourism is important in our village, it is mostly residential, with a large number of retirees (average age approximately 59 years) and holiday homes. Arizona home prices are very high here (median price for a single-family home is $950,000) due to the region’s natural beauty and limited development space. They are very old, mostly white, upper-middle class, most likely conservative, but mostly well-educated, and live adjacent to Sedona, a town that is purplish, if not blueish. This is offset somewhat by the fact that

We have been walking 8.5 miles daily through several local neighborhoods for years. In 2020, as the election approached, I became interested in the political signals people were giving off. So I started counting the political leanings of the single-family homes I encountered on my walks. By Election Day 2020, it was a very close race, with a 9-8 vote favoring Harris. Today, quite a bit has changed, with 18 people supporting Harris, but still only 8 supporting “TFG”. One of the eight has just one sign for the local Republican candidate for county office. The house, which always has a gaudy manger scene at Christmas time, also has a sign that says “Jesus 2024 — Our Only Hope.” I’m not a Democrat, but I’m also not a Trumper. Interestingly, one of them is our Supporters hold Arizona Republican Party signs endorsing Harris. I hope there are many more such people in our state!

So what does this mean? Probably nothing, and it’s hardly scientific, but this election really does give us a great candidate on our side, and the political signs in the neighborhood indicate I think it even changed the way Republicans in the department think.