Do Democrats have a chance to flip a Senate seat in Arkansas? One poll this week suggested they might—stunningly finding that Republican Senator Tom Cotton is trailing his Democratic opponent in the deep red state. Experts say not to take it too seriously: The poll is almost certainly an outlier. But, they add, there might be some useful lessons in it.
So why does it look like a Democrat has a chance? One answer can be found in the nature of polling itself. “People like to sometimes call polling a prediction. It’s not a prediction, it’s a measurement,” said Robert Coon, managing partner with Impact Management Group, who helped craft the questions for the poll. The poll doesn’t necessarily reflect how Arkansans will vote on November 3, but instead captures how they feel in the present, before spending and advertising has kicked into high gear.
Cotton ended June with nearly $10 million in cash on hand. Shoffner had just $864,000. In the 45 to 60 days before the election, both campaigns will likely start spending their money in earnest, putting up more TV ads and sending out mailers. According to Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard University, most voters don’t start paying full attention to the candidates until at least September; it’s not unusual for earlier polls to yield some bizarre results.
“People definitely shouldn’t overweight what one poll says, and there will obviously be more outside polls [and] inside polls that are done,” said Coon. “Really, it’s about a trend line.”
Even if Shoffner isn’t headed to a shocking win in a solidly red state, the poll still offers some useful guidance for the campaigns as they hurtle toward November. Cotton seems to be underperforming in the fast-growing Northwest Arkansas region, Barth explained. Shoffner has spent time in that part of the state, which could be paying off. But as spending increases, Cotton may put more resources into that area. Shoffner was also doing better with voters in suburbs around Little Rock than Democrats have done in past cycles. That could be because those areas are becoming more and more racially diverse and thus more Democratic, he suggested. Unsurprisingly, Cotton did well among voters 65 and older, a reliably Republican demographic in the state.
—Emma Janssen
Outside Washington
“Cities are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to address one of the most persistent sources of housing permitting delays: incomplete applications,” reports Robbie Sequeira at Stateline. Baltimore, Denver, and Los Angeles are some of the recent converts, joining many others who have already adopted or are exploring the option. Honolulu and Seattle have both reportedly reviewed the accuracy of the permitting tool CivCheck, finding it somewhere between 87 percent and 92 percent accurate while shortening review time—but no one seems to think it can fully replace human review.
In a new report for the Roosevelt Institute, Diana Hernandez and Lauren Ross argue that energy insecurity is no longer an issue just for low-income households, but is in fact a growing “mainstream crisis” driven not just by “rising utility rates, inflation, stagnant wages,” but also “outdated” housing stock and heating and cooling systems. Not much remains of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, they acknowledge, but some lessons can be pulled from the wreckage. Among them: Cross-agency cooperation between bodies like the Department of Energy and Department of Housing and Urban Development better facilitates “whole-home retrofits,” which are likely to be the most effective in achieving “lasting reductions in energy consumption and improv[ing] overall housing quality.”
—Heather Souvaine Horn
In Closing
Florida Representative Angie Nixon’s win in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Florida was very surprising. Her opponent, Eugene Vindman, had a massive fundraising advantage. Nixon is a Democratic Socialists of America member and Vindman from the center-left Resistance wing of the party, so this is being covered as an ideological result, another win for the surging left. That’s true. But another explanation is that Nixon is fairly rooted in Florida and the political scene there, while Vindman is more of a national, D.C., MSNBC figure.
It’s not just that Jon Ossoff made a quip about her that turned into days of news coverage. It’s that many of the salacious, unflattering details that emerged about Harp must have come from other people inside the Trump White House. Her enemies are not only Democrats! That said, she truly seems to have an audience of one and there is little evidence that the president wants Harp to leave his side.
Political Trivia Question of the Day
On this date in 1858, the first of seven of these historic events took place. What events were these? (Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in Tuesday’s newsletter.)
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