Arkansas was supposed to be a sure thing for Republicans seeking to regain control of the U.S. Senate this year.
Remember the lead-up to the political season, when every talking head in the business was saying that U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., was doomed in his re-election bid? Conventional wisdom was that anyone the Republicans put up for the post could oust the state's senior senator.
Well, three months out from the November general election, that's not exactly the case.
Pryor doesn't appear to be anywhere near as vulnerable as he was expected to be, although recent credible polling suggests he may trail his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, currently the state's 4th District congressman.
Make no mistake. Pryor is vulnerable, just not as vulnerable as previously thought.
Maybe it is because the Pryor brand is still strong in Arkansas. Maybe it is because the Pryor campaign has been somewhat successful in defining Cotton to the electorate.
Remember, Pryor is a two-term senator with long-term political credentials while Cotton is a one-term congressman who began the Senate race as an unknown to a lot of Arkansas.
Cotton has a record and Pryor has used it to define his challenger, just as Cotton has derided Pryor's record.
All those negative advertisements about both candidates muddy the perceptions of each, but neither has emerged as the leading candidate.
So here's where the race appears to stand:
Previous polling gave Pryor the lead, but recent polling from Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College gives Cotton the edge, 44-42 percent over Pryor. The margin of error for the 1,780-person sample is plus or minus 2.3 percent, which means this poll essentially shows them even.
What's more, as Roby Brock, editor-in-chief of the magazine, explained, neither candidate is near 50 percent. There is a lot of room for movement either way.
For the record, 7 percent of those polled were undecided while 4 percent said they'd support Mark Swaney, the Green Party candidate, and 3 percent backed Nathan LaFrance, the Libertarian candidate.
If the third-party candidates really do peel off as much as 7 percent of the vote, that could matter in a seriously close election, which this one may turn out to be.
The sample in this recent poll is larger than for a lot of polls, which means not only that the margin of error really is less but also that subsets in the polling may be more accurate than if drawn from smaller voter samples.
So take note of the demographic breakdowns this poll reflects:
Cotton led Pryor by a 49.5 percent to 33 percent margin among independent voters. But Pryor led Cotton by 45 percent to 40 percent among female voters and by 73 percent to 16 percent among African-Americans. Another telling count was that voters 65 and older favored Cotton to Pryor by 46-42 percent.
If turnout is heavy among the older, white, male and independent voters, Cotton could certainly prevail. But, if women and blacks vote more heavily than the sample reflects, Pryor could hold the seat.
Hence, a lot of the talk these days is about efforts to get out the vote among those voters who will most likely support one or the other of the candidates.
Democrats in particular are thought to be planning to use former President Bill Clinton to rally Arkansas' black voters to support not only Pryor but also Mike Ross, the Democratic candidate for governor. Ross and Asa Hutchinson, the Republican nominee, are both former congressmen vying to replace term-limited Gov. Mike Beebe.
To be sure, Republicans will counter with their own get-out-the-vote drive.
Every election, in the end, is about turnout. Nothing really counts except the votes that are actually cast -- not the noise of the campaign, not the millions of dollars spent in advertising.
Those things influence turnout, of course, and we'll see plenty "influence" in the remaining dozen weeks or so. The predicted expenditure of record amounts of money will continue right up to Nov. 4 general election, presumably swaying people to vote one way or the other.
When it is all done, only part of the electorate will respond, providing the only tally that matters.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Commentary on 08/06/2014