Get out the calculator

Would you care to better understand what will happen, or might happen, in the big election in Arkansas? If so, allow me to help. First I’ll share the best short summation I have yet heard for the state’s prevailing political dynamic. Then I will offer a few basic assumptions. Then we’ll engage in basic calculator-aided arithmetic and see what we get.

—————— The splendid summation comes from Jay Barth, a Democrat, for sure, but a political scientist at Hendrix College with a professional academic aptitude for detachment when it comes to data analysis.

Last week Barth was quoted as follows by Real Clear Politics in regard to the looming Arkansas political contests: Turnout “is the whole game. If it doesn’t happen, then this is a pretty comfortable Republican win. If it does work, there’s a scenario for eking out a series of [Democratic] victories.”

Barth makes himself abundantly clear, but I’ll put it another way in the interest of over- abundance: A status quo midterm election based on a standard midterm turnout means Republicans win everything in sight. So Democrats are trying to disturb that status quo. They’re spending lots of national party money for 40 field operations, 18 of them new, to register new voters in Democratic areas and then get those new voters to the polls November 4.

There is your ballgame, pure and simple.

So let’s do some assuming and then some arithmetic, focusing on the U.S. Senate race.

The turnout in the state’s last midterm U.S. Senate race was 783,000, a rounded figure. That was the race between John Boozman and Blanche Lincoln.

This year’s race between Mark Pryor and Tom Cotton has higher stakes, is much more visible and is infinitely more competitive. So it stands to reason the turnout will be higher. I’m saying it will be 10 percent higher.

If you add 78,300 voters to the 783,000 who turned out for the Senate race in 2010, you get a Pryor-Cotton turnout of 861,300.

Right away I’m giving 5 percent of that turnout to the two peripheral candidates, one Green and one Libertarian. It’s about what they drew in 2010.

Fatigue from the relentless negativity in the Pryor-Cotton battle could drive that number higher, though, in the end, I doubt it. This is a choice between two candidates, and people will eventually make that choice.

Meantime, an averaging of recent polls as computed by Real Clear Politics has Cotton ahead of Pryor, 46-42.

I’m reasonably comfortable extending the 46-42 ratio to those as-yet untallied. I refer to those not in the 88 percent who are decided between Cotton and Pryor and not in the 5 percent given by assumption to the two other candidates.

To stay away from too much algebra and decimalizing, let’s round it off and give each major candidate an additional 3.5 percentage points.

That is to say that, based on a likely voter turnout typical of a midterm election, and an average of reasonably credible polling, and further based on some rounded assumptions for the still-undecided, I have Cotton at 49.5 percent, Pryor at 45.5 percent, and the two other candidates splitting 5 percent.

Republicans say there’s your election, spike the ball, pop a cork and declare the revolution completed.

Democrats say maybe not. They say they’ve been busy registering brand-new voters. They say they will deliver an entirely new set of previously unexpected—and nonsurveyed—Democratic numbers, enough to hand narrow victory to Pryor and presumably other Democrats. So let’s delve into raw numbers. By those previously projected percentages based on typical turnout, Cotton would receive 426,195 votes and Pryor 391,755.

That’s a deficit to Democrats of 34,440 votes. That is to say Democrats would need to register and produce that number of new voters, plus one, to win.

How daunting is that? On a scale of one to 10, with one being easy and 10 a miracle … about a 9.

The secretary of state’s office said Thursday that, as of that date, new voter registrants since the primary totaled 71,585.

The deadline to register is Monday. Democratic sources told me they believed the final number of newly registered voters would reach 90,000.

It’s from that number—and let’s say 90,000, for a best Democratic case—that the Democrats would need to realize a net gain of 34,440 votes.

I’m told that, typically, 42 percent of new registrants actually vote. Fortytwo percent of 90,000 is 37,800.

If all those 37,800 new voters were Democrats, Pryor would win by about 3,400 votes.

For the record: Some insiders tell me this mathematical process I’ve outlined is valid enough, but that my startup assumption of a margin of 49.5-45.5 for Cotton is too wide.

But everyone seems to agree that Democrats will require at least 16,000 new votes, probably 20,000 and maybe even the 34,000 arising from these assumptions.

The broader point is that perhaps you can see why Republicans are confident and Democrats obsessed with turnout.

This scenario also shows why Republicans like voter-ID laws.

Flooded by first-time voters lured to the polls by Democrats, Republicans will want to see driver’s licenses.