As Election Day Looms, Arkansas Poll Finds GOP Leading

The 16th annual Arkansas Poll released Thursday found an electorate more pessimistic about the direction of Arkansas and more optimistic about their personal future. Likely voters prefer Republican candidates, although a record significant gap divides male and female voters.

Among very likely voters, Tom Cotton, the Republican candidate, maintains a significant lead over Democrat incumbent Mark Pryor, at 49 percent to 36 percent in the race for U.S. Senate. That gap widens significantly among men, with 57 percent of very likely voters favoring Cotton versus 36 percent for Pryor.

On the other hand, women showed no clear preference, with both Cotton and Pryor at 42 percent. Thus, the gender gap, which is calculated as the difference between the male and female vote for the leading candidate, is 15 points. This is the largest gender gap in Arkansas Poll results in the decade in which the gap has been calculated.

“It is no accident that the Democrats seem to have made October the month of the woman,” said poll director Janine Parry, “Not only are women as likely to favor Pryor as they are Cotton, but their votes are still up for grabs. While 7 percent of men answered ‘don’t know’ or refused to answer, 13 percent of women were in one of those categories.”

Conducted between October 21 and October 27, the poll showed solid leads for Republican candidates among very likely voters, continuing a pattern that emerged in 2010. As with the senatorial race, the Republican gubernatorial candidate Asa Hutchinson leads Democrat Mike Ross, 50 percent to 39 percent among very likely voters.

Poll questions about preferences in races for the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislative elections were generic, simply asking whether the respondent would be voting for the Republican or Democratic candidate. Among very likely voters, Republican candidates led Democratic candidates 47 percent to 33 percent in U.S. House races and 45 percent to 36 percent in state legislative elections.

The Arkansas Poll was conducted by Issues & Answers Network. Interviewers completed 747 live telephone interviews among a random sample of adult Arkansans. Twenty-five percent of all respondents interviewed used their cell phones for all or most of their calls.

The survey’s margin of error statewide is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, meaning that researchers are 95 percent confident that the actual result lies within 3.6 percentage points in either direction of the result the poll’s sample produced.

A full summary report is available here.