Elasticity. Southern whites give the GOP 50% of the vote automatically.
In most southern states that is the case, and currently the situation in Georgia. Arizona and Georgia have approximately the same % of Whites (57-59).
The difference between Georgia and Arizona, however, is that Democrats really don't need to worry about Whites here with a good ground game and high turnout (I would also independently argue that many White Arizonans are similarly-minded to the southern Whites; there's a reason AZ is under the CRA).
The solid minority in Arizona is the Latino community, which may go to Obama by a factor of 2-to-1 and makes up 30% of the state. The solid minority in Georgia is the Black community, which will hand Obama their votes by a factor of 9-to-1 and also makes up 30% of the state. The Black population in Georgia is also growing - in conjunction with the Latino population - while Whites are shrinking. Another equal comparison among the states is the number of Latinos who are ineligible to vote: roughly 475,000 each, which obviously impacts Arizona's ability to flip more than Georgia's, seeing as it's a greater share of the population.
Georgia could be majority-minority (with at least 2/3 of minorities being Black) by 2020. Existing calculations I've seen by the state Democratic Party show that Georgia Democrats already have a 10% advantage among registered voters (based on primary participation and demographic analysis), but are always outperformed by Republican turnout. Maybe the campaign sees AZ as a state that needs more "push" to ultimately trend D than GA will, but I would think that the campaign would rather be concerned with which state would be easier to flip this cycle, which I still maintain should have been Georgia.
