Not insurmountable
The polling partners of Talk Business and Politics and Hendrix College unveiled this week a notable and perhaps influential poll of the 2nd District congressional race.
Its release mystified some Democrats and probably deflated others, which might be its influence.
Local Democrats have been excited only about one thing, that being state Rep. Clarke Tucker’s challenge to the Trump-sacrificed Republican incumbent, French Hill, in a district of which Democratic-leaning Pulaski County casts about half the vote.
National political handicappers had moved the race from “likely” for Hill to “lean” to Hill, which was significant. The next move, if there was one, would be to “tossup,” or, I suppose, back to “likely.”
The TBP/Hendrix poll beginning after Labor Day might tell us something.
Would the race be close, in or around the margin of error, and thus fuel the already stirring passions of local Democrats while signaling to national Democratic money-sources that they should invest in this youngster Tucker in Arkansas?
Or would post-2010 form hold, revealing the status quo, meaning an embedded Republican advantage in the suburban counties? Would Hill lead by inertia and by a solid-enough margin that objective analysts and potential national Democratic donors would lose interest, or at least fervor? Would Democrats have to work hard to maintain all the optimism and enthusiasm they’d had before? Now we know.
Talk Business and Hendrix produced about as status-quo a finding as you could order up, with Hill ahead, 49.5 to 40.5.
Nine points is just about the perfect range for Republicans. It’s enough to assure them they’re in good shape. But it’s just close enough that they might need to keep saying “Nancy Pelosi” and spending money for attack ads on Tucker to make sure he doesn’t turn that nine-point deficit into something like five points and open the Democratic spigot.
Smart people ask me why Hill and the Republicans would keep saying Nancy Pelosi, tying Tucker to her. They ask whether voters in the 2nd District are going to be swayed by her name, and, if so, on what conceivable basis.
The answer is that modern politics, particularly as a factor in the right-wing Republican emergence, is based entirely on negative votes grounded in fear.
People aren’t running around talking about what a spectacular congressman that magnificent French Hill is. They’re running around trying to figure out who and what it is they’re supposed to be afraid of this time.
Republicans rose to dominance in the state from fear of Barack Obama, and of government health care, and of gun control, and of gay-lifestyle emergence. All of that fueled turnout.
This time, Democrats are fired up because of fear of Donald Trump, or utter disdain of him. With a significant Democratic base in the 2nd District, Republicans worry that garden-variety right-wingers might not turn out with the intensity of Democratic voters—absent fear. Some ol’ boy down in Saline County might forget to go vote for … which Little Rock blueblood was that, anyway, the banker named French or the Harvard lawyer named Clarke?
It is a fact that voting for Tucker contributes to the potential advancement of a Democratic takeover of the House that would elevate Pelosi— she of a sanctuary city and all those gays and all that scary liberalism—to speaker, even though Tucker says he wouldn’t vote for her.
So now we know empirically why Hill cowered from that KATV/Talk
Business prime-time debate with Tucker. It’s because a nine-point lead is a reason to punt on fourth-and-one.
And, yes, I invoked for a reason that Arkansas led Colorado State 279 late in the third quarter, punted on fourth-and-one, and … well, you know.
And this TBP/Hendrix poll— while solid historically—is a tad odd this time.
Hill actually leads Tucker in Pulaski, albeit within the margin of error, at 46-44. Even Pat Hays beat Hill solidly in Pulaski in 2014. And Tucker curiously has a lead in a small and thus unrepresentative sample in Faulkner County.
Four things about that: One is that Hill lives in Pulaski, and Pulaski is more than Little Rock, and maybe that’s a factor. Two is that, speaking statistically, a sample of this size in a congressional district can be too small in individual counties to be trusted, though it all tends to work out mathematically in the fullness of the sample districtwide. Three is that nine points aren’t insurmountable if, somehow, you can interrupt inertia and disturb the status quo.
And four? Remember Colorado State.