As Power Line’s great friend Tom Cotton prepares to run against incumbent Senator Mark Pryor in Arkansas, it is worth taking in some of the early polls. Over at Hot Air Ed Morrissey rounds it up, and finds the outlook for Cotton is good. One poll finds that only 37 percent of Arkansas voters think Pryor should be re-elected. Even the most sympathetic poll for Pryor (conducted by a labor union) finds him leading Cotton, but with only 43 percent support, which is a dismal place for an incumbent.
As Morrissey puts it:
Even at face value, though, this poll isn’t good news for Pryor. He’s been in the Senate for 12 years and has tremendous name recognition in Arkansas; Cotton has been in the House for six months and has never run in a state-wide race. The House race in November was his first political bid, which is why half of the poll’s respondents don’t have an opinion on Cotton at all. Any incumbent with a 43% rating against a relative unknown is in deep trouble, and that’s especially true of Pryor in a state as red as Arkansas.
There’s much more in Ed’s overview; worth reading the whole thing.
UPDATE: RCP’s Sean Trende weighs in with a supremely detailed look at the long-term data on Arkansas, and thinks that while the race will be close, the odds favor Tom Cotton.
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