The interesting thing about AZ vs CO/NV/NM is that while NM has the highest latino/hispanic population, almost 50%... AZ is the second highest out of them with around 30% (give or take).
What dictates the final result in these states tends to be more about the mix of the non-latino voters, which is why AZ has remained consistently Republican, if you look at the results since 2000, the Democratic vote has barely shifted, while the state's latino population grows, why? Because it's white voters are older and more Republican.
Exit poll data from 2012
Colorado - Obama: White vote 44% (+5 on nation) - Latino vote 75% (+4 on nation)
Nevada - Obama: White vote 43% (+4 on nation) - Latino vote 71% ( -)
New Mexico - Obama: White vote: 41% (+2 on nation) - Latino vote 65% (-6 on nation)... but the Latino vote in NM is 37% of the electorate versus 14-17% in the other states
But Arizona?
Arizona - Obama: White vote 32% (-7 on nation) - Latino vote: 74% (+3 on nation)...
The Arizona GOP has on the whole gone far to the right. That's how the GOP went in California toward the end of its domination of California politics. The GOP has pushed some extreme politics, as if in the knowledge that enacting them is a now-or-never proposition.
Democrats can obviously win the Presidential election without Arizona. The state is frosting on the cake. With such a state as Pennsylvania or Virginia as the tipping-point state in 2016 I see this order of winning the states through Arizona:
New Hampshire
Iowa
Pennsylvania/Virginia
Ohio
Colorado
Florida
North Carolina
Georgia
Arizona
Missouri
Indiana
But know well: the enmity that whites have had toward Latinos has never been as severe as that against blacks. White people in Arizona are more likely to have a Hispanic in-law.
I'm not sure what your point is here? Knowing someone of a different race is not going to make them vote the same way as them.
