Arizona: Who will win? It depends who you ask

As the race for the White House appears to be reaching its final phase, the focus has narrowed to some key battleground states where US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are almost neck and neck.

Arizona is one of those so-called swing states that both candidates hope will help seal their election victory.

DW is using data from The Associated Press to call the race for each state in the US presidential election. Its numbers are based on nearly 139,000 interviews with registered voters across all 50 states that aim to understand the makeup of the American electorate nationwide.

The AP, using those surveys, has projected that Democratic candidate Joe Biden will take Arizona.

Read more: Trump team mounts legal challenges to vote counting

Projections are made when US media outlets or polling companies believe one candidate is unable to catch the other main rival — even when there are still outstanding ballots to be counted. Hundreds of thousands of votes still need to be tallied up in Arizona, as of 12:30 CET on Friday.

Fox News, the US cable network owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has agreed with AP that Biden will end up as the victor. That call is significant. If proven to be accurate, it means that Arizona, which Trump won in 2016, has flipped from Republican to Democrat control.

A win in Arizona would give Biden 11 potential electoral college votes, and make Trump's path to reelection increasingly more difficult.

The Democratic hopeful is currently projected to have 253 of the 538 electoral college votes divvied up between the country's 50 states. The winning candidate needs a total of 270 college votes.

Read more: Fact check: Could the courts decide fate of US election?

Biden has 264 with the inclusion of Arizona, which Fox News and The Associated Press have called in his favor — a decision that sparked outrage in the Trump campaign.

"Fox & AP made a hasty call in AZ, a state the President will still win," tweeted communications director Tim Murtaugh. "5 of 7 election decision orgs haven't called AZ. Fox & AP should rescind theirs."

But both news organizations have refused to back down.

Fox News has stuck by its prediction and the AP, in a note released on Friday morning, explained why it decided to call Arizona for Joe Biden.

"Arizona has a long political history of voting Republican," but changing demographics, "including a fast-growing Latino population and a boom of new residents — some fleeing the skyrocketing cost of living in neighboring California — have made the state friendlier to Democrats," it said.