Moore: Recent polling from Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College indicates that some incumbent Republicans in Arkansas may be less safe than anticipated this November, according to the polling conducted earlier this month. Sen. Tom Cotton is trailing by nearly four points to Democratic challenger Hallie Shoffner. In a separate poll, Congressman French Hill is trailing his Democratic challenger, Chris Jones, by a similar margin in the 3rd Congressional District. Here to discuss is Talk Business & Politics' Roby Brock. Roby, thank you for joining us today.
Brock: Good to be with you, Matthew.
Moore: You have gotten a little bit of feedback on some polling data that you guys have shared over Talk Business & Politics and in partnership with Hendrix College. First, Roby, let's talk about what was your gut reaction when you saw these poll results for the first time. And then we'll dig into some of the numbers here.
Brock: Yeah. So I was a little surprised. Arkansas has been such a red state for the last decade that I was just wondering, would there ever be any chinks in the armor, and we're seeing that for the first time in 10 years, quite frankly, if not a little bit longer than that.
But I think the big thing that stands out with me, there's two big things that stand out with me from this polling data when I was crawling down through it for the first time. Number one, Donald Trump unpopular in Arkansas for the first time in a long time, but not terribly unpopular. We've seen the president with some negative net approval ratings that are negative 27, negative 37. He's down seven points here in his approval versus disapproval rating, which is not an insurmountable number. But it does say something pretty significant for a red state like Arkansas, a historically red state like Arkansas for the last decade, to have that kind of attitude about the guy that's the face of the GOP nationally and in Arkansas.
The second thing that stood out to me was where independent voters are, by about a 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 margin. It fluctuates a little bit. Over the last decade, we've seen people who declare themselves as independents say that they're going to support Republican candidates by two-thirds to three-fourths margin. That has been consistent for four to five election cycles in a row. And this is the first time I've seen data that says that independent voters, by a 2-to-1, almost a 3-to-1 margin, 70%, say they're not voting for a Republican at this juncture in the campaign.
So that's the first time I've seen independents swing like we used to see them swing back before the red wave in Arkansas. This is the first time they've started swing it back. Is it permanent? I don't know. I'll have to see it in several cycles to say yes or no. But it's there right now. And this is a snapshot in time, reflection of the moment. And right now independent voters that have traditionally gone with Republicans are mad at the Republican office holders.
Moore: Well, let's look first at one statewide election here that we're looking at. And a result that I think caught a few people off guard is the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Sen. Tom Cotton and his Democratic challenger, Hallie Shoffner. According to your polling data, she is leading in that poll, 47 to 44.
Brock: Yes. Margin of error of around 4.7%, too, even though it's a big poll. It did have a little bit higher margin of error. We had to weight significantly on one of our factors where we kind of gauge college educated voters versus non-college educated voters. And so there was a lower participation from non-college degree voters. And so we had to move those numbers up, which put a little bit more margin of error in there. It did help the Republican candidates off the raw data, though, I will say, because there's more appeal there.
But yeah, that race, I'm probably a little bit surprised. I probably figured Tom Cotton would be a little bit in the lead, but again, that would be my predetermination there. Once you see the data and you see where those independent voters are, it makes a 1,000% logical sense. That's been the swing that's pushed Republicans up over 60% all these years. And they're not there right now for them. So Hallie Shoffner gets the Democratic base, and she's getting independents by 2-to-1.
Moore: Another race that we're looking at here that you've just released some data on is the 2nd Congressional District, which is in the Little Rock area there in central Arkansas. Your data shows that the challenger, Chris Jones, the Democratic candidate in that race, 48%. And the incumbent Republican Congressman French Hill at 44%.
Brock: It's almost same song, different verse. Once again, we see those independent voters going by more than 2-to-1 margin with Chris Jones in that race. There is no third party candidate in that race. So someone's going to win with half the vote, more than half the vote. And there's not going to be a third party candidate in there taking any votes away from whoever loses.
But it's the same trend lines that we saw in the statewide poll. And this is one of the reasons I've got some extra confidence in that these numbers reflect what's actually happening right now, is they're two separate polls done on two different nights with two different voter samples. So what we see playing out at the statewide level, where these independent voters are moving 2-to-1, 3-to-1 towards non-Republican candidates, either Democrats or Libertarians in that 2nd Congressional District race, it's the same thing. We see independents once again saying by, I think it was a 56 to 25 margin, that they're supporting Chris Jones over French Hill at this juncture in the race.
And so I think the incumbents have some work cut out for them to try to get those independents back into their category or back into their column like they've had for 10 years. They haven't had to nurse it or work it very hard in this election cycle. They're going to have to.
So I would say for everybody listening, for any of the races, you're going to see a barrage of negative advertising towards some of these Democrats, particularly Hallie Shoffner and Chris Jones, because they've got to bring their numbers down somehow. So whether that's outside groups or the candidates and campaigns themselves doing that advertising, I don't know.
And then you're going to see a lot of pro Republican incumbent. I don't think you'll see a lot of mention of Donald Trump in any of their ads. He's underwater here. That's not going to be an advantage for them. So look for them to talk about what Tom Cotton to say what I have done for you, French Hill to say what I have done for you and Sarah Sanders to say what I have done for you. I think you're going to see a different kind of campaign than what you've seen in the past.
Moore: The Republican Party of Arkansas has called this untrustworthy poll numbers. How do you respond to a claim like that?
Brock: Well, first of all, I always take attacks on our credibility pretty seriously, and I don't care for it very much. I did respond to the Republican Party on that. I usually just keep my mouth shut and keep trucking, but I really felt that was disingenuous.
For starters, they said all that before the poll numbers were even released. So I think that they were anticipating that the poll numbers were not going to be favorable for them. And that would be because their internal polling shows they're not doing very well with the voters. I have a feeling that their internal polling is showing pretty close to what our external and public polling is showing. Otherwise, they wouldn't have taken the cheap shot that they did.
But we exercise a lot of rigor in our polling. I have Jay Barth, a Democrat, Hendrix College, and professor emeritus in political science is part of our team. And Robert Coon, Republican consultant with Impact Management Group in Little Rock. These guys have run a lot of races and studied a lot of races on both sides of the aisle there. They help me construct the poll, they help execute the poll, they help analyze the poll. And so we put a lot of bipartisan and fair effort into making sure that our polls got credibility.
And so I 100% confident in our numbers. It's a snapshot of where we are at this point in time. And it's choose to stick your head in the sand and ignore it. That's kind of at your own peril, but knock yourself out.
Moore: What do you think the public misunderstands about polling?
Brock: I think everybody, I do think this is a problematic is I think everybody thinks when a poll comes out that that's what you, the pollsters are predicting for Election Day. And that's not the case. It's where the race is at this moment in time.
So one of the things that the Republican Party has done to take a shot at us is, well, he had this race at 46-46 and our candidate won by 10 points. It's like, OK, well, my poll was done in August or September, and a lot happens between August and September and the first week in November. So yeah, I would hope that the numbers would change some.
So I'm not trying to predict what's going to happen on Election Day. I'm trying to tell people where the race stands today. And to me, it's more insightful to look at these numbers in the cross tabs of where things are working well for some candidates and where things are not working well for candidates.
We talked about the independents, for instance. I'll give you another prediction here. Sarah Sanders is doing very well with female voters, which makes sense. She is a female. She's a historic female figure. She's a mom. She's worked on maternal health issues. So she should be doing well with women voters. Tom Cotton's not doing well with women voters.
I guarantee you, mark my words, Matthew, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Tom Cotton will appear in a campaign commercial together sometime in the near future, and you will see Tom Cotton and Sarah Sanders doing some level of joint press conferences between now and the first week of November. It will be inevitable that that will happen. As a matter of fact, it happened a week ago Friday when they did a press conference in Little Rock together.
So I know that that's what they're seeing in their internal information. We're seeing it in our external information. But those are the types of insights that I look for from the polling to help me determine why are they doing what they're doing? Why are they messaging like they're messaging? Who are they trying to reach? Where is their voter base? That's what this polling is hopefully helpful to people to see why some of the decision making is going on in the campaigning that we're seeing from candidates. It's not a prediction of what's going to happen on Election Day.
Moore: In addition to producing this polling, you also host a TV show where you regularly talk to elected officials and to candidates. How does polling like this impact your work, talking to politicians or talking to candidates?
Brock: Well, it gives us something to talk about, doesn't it? Hey, what do you think? Are you struggling? Are you changing?
Look, I've had Congressman French Hill and Chris Jones on the show the last two weeks of the TV show that we've done. So that was before the polling came out, but I've got Hallie Shoffner coming on a week from this weekend, and I've extended an invitation to Tom Cotton. And I hope that they still want to talk about issues. I've got a show that reaches people who care about politics. I certainly hope that they want to speak to those audiences. I'm sure that they get a little out of whack when the numbers aren't in their favor. I'm sure the ones that have the numbers in their favor are happy to come on and talk about that, but I'm just more interested in what they're hearing. I'm interested in hearing what they think they need to do to reach the voters that they're trying to turn out, and I'll give them a platform for doing that, but I'll challenge them for why they have the positions that they have.
At the same time, I think there's a very cordial way to have ask tough questions and to have those conversations. It does not have to be messy. It doesn't have to be yelling and stepping over each other. We can be pretty civil with each other. And I'm a big supporter of that.
Moore: Well, you can find more information about all of this polling when you go to talkbusiness.net. Roby, thank you for your work on this. And thanks for coming on Ozarks at Large to talk more about it in detail.
Brock: I'll come on anytime. Thanks.
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