As the race winds down

It was supposed to be the state’s showcase race. Clarke Tucker supporters insist it still is, notwithstanding obituaries written by anachronistic polling addicts.

There is the recent poll from Hendrix College and Talk Business and Politics. Yes, that blankety-blank poll.

It showed Republican incumbent French Hill with a widening lead, to 51.5-39.5, over Democrat Tucker in the 2nd District congressional race.

This bigger lead, up nine points from six weeks before, made sense because President Donald Trump’s approval ratings were way up over that time in the district, mostly because of a backlash against national Democratic tactics in the Brett Kavanaugh affair.

The poll got some backup Tuesday when the national Cook Political Report moved the 2nd District race from the iffy “lean Republican” status to the fairly certain “likely Republican” category.

Cook had previously moved it from “solid Republican” to “likely” and then to “lean,” all toward Tucker. Now, when it counts, the 2nd District is seen as returning to its modern identity as Pulaski County surrounded by Oklahoma.

It is customary for candidates and their supporters to bemoan unfavorable polls and cite anecdotal evidence of enthusiastic support. Anecdotal evidence of enthusiasm is a little akin to Razorback fan enthusiasm before the game.

The only possible difference in the Tucker case is the potential credibility of three complaints, one about polls in general, one specific to the poll in question and one about candidate behavior in this race.

The general complaint is that polling is less reliable after the last presidential race and steadily falls further behind the cultural curve due to seismic changes in habits.

It’s not just that polls call landlines and young people don’t know what those are. It’s that people don’t answer any phone much anymore—whether land or cell—unless they recognize the number.

I keep a landline because … I actually don’t know. The last time I checked the voice-mail messages, there were 134, most of them automated. I think maybe the Hendrix-Talk Business robot had called, which means Tucker should have had one more vote. To be clear, the Hendrix-Talk

Business poll makes automated calls to both kinds of phones. It compiled an unassailable record for accuracy by 2010. It is run by smart and fair people, namely Roby Brock and Jay Barth.

But the point is that all polling practices get a little more challenging with each new election cycle. Then there are the two specific points.

The first is that the Hendrix-Talk Business poll showed Tucker with only a 17-point lead, 51-34, among African Americans. Democrats could normally expect a generic 80-20 advantage or better among African Americans, especially for Tucker, who has evident strong backing in the black community.

The second empirical point is that Hill recently added to his television buy to run nasty attack ads absurdly accusing Tucker of supporting violent immigrant gangs. Republican dark money has continued to pour in against Tucker, accusing him of being a tool of Hollywood elites because he has a paltry $12,000 or so in contributions from people identified in the entertainment industry.

The point is that Tucker’s people may not be the only ones thinking the race is closer than 12 points. Hill’s people may think it, too.

It could be, though, that Hill and the national Republicans simply take nothing for granted.

Meantime, I have been critical of Tucker for not making a vigorous-enough case for his central issue—health care, mainly Hill’s callous disregard for it by supporting a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act with its federal guarantees of equitably priced full coverage for persons with pre-existing conditions.

Now Tucker is closing his campaign by emphasizing something else entirely. He has chosen to close by decrying the indecency of Hill’s attack advertising.

In a commercial that’s been up for several days, and now in his new closing-argument commercial, Tucker talks of health care secondarily to decency and the win-at-any-cost tone of Hill’s campaign advertising.

It could be that swing voters are newly concerned about the state of the nation’s decency amid rightwinger mailings of pipe bombs and a neo-Nazi’s slaughter of Jewish persons gathered in their synagogue.

The Tucker campaign is banking that some independent or swing voters have recoiled against the tone of the assaults of Hill’s advertising. For his part, Tucker disputes that emphasizing decency is his closing tactic.

“It’s not about decency as a message,” he told me the other day. “It’s about decency.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is not counting on this race. The district remains embedded in Republican advantage, with Saline, Faulkner and White counties standing ready to lather Republican votes to offset the stout Democratic advantage Tucker surely will reap in Pulaski County.

But the Tucker campaign continues to show enthusiasm and contend bravely that an election-night celebration is not out of the question.

John Brummett