A new poll out of Arkansas is raising eyebrows nationwide.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner has taken the lead over Republican Sen. Tom Cotton in the latest Hendrix College poll, a remarkable development in a state Donald Trump carried overwhelmingly in 2024.
Shoffner joined MeidasTouch’s Ben Meiselas to discuss the poll and why she believes something significant is happening on the ground in Arkansas.
“The poll really just confirms what we already knew,” Shoffner said, noting that it closely mirrored her campaign’s own recent internal polling. “Arkansans are very independent-minded.”
LISTEN TO INTERVIEWS LIKE THIS AND MORE ANYWHERE ON THE MEIDASTOUCH PODCAST!
Her pitch is straightforward: voters don’t need to change parties to decide they’ve had enough of Cotton.
“You do not have to change your party to want to change your senator,” Shoffner told Meiselas. “We’re all looking at the past 12 years of Tom Cotton and realizing that Washington is absolutely not working for us.”
Shoffner, a sixth-generation farmer who closed her own farming operation last year, said the economic crisis facing Arkansas has become impossible to ignore. She pointed to the damage caused by trade wars, higher diesel costs, struggling soybean farmers and the broader affordability crisis.
“We’re pulling out our pockets and there’s nothing in them,” she said. “We all know the grocery store doesn’t have a Democrat price and a Republican price.”
Shoffner said she has encountered voters across Arkansas who backed Trump in recent elections but now feel “betrayed” by what has happened to their communities.
Her own story, she argues, reflects what many Arkansas families are experiencing.
“We are doing everything right. We’re working harder than ever, and we’re still not making it,” Shoffner said. “It’s not because we have failed. It’s because we live in a system rigged against us.”
And she believes Cotton has become a symbol of that disconnect.
“People are tired,” Shoffner said. “Whether I’m in a farm shop, a diner, or a Democratic County Party meeting, people are tired of the rhetoric and the political theater.”
For Democrats who have long written off Arkansas as ruby red territory, Shoffner has a different message.
“Arkansas is ready for change.”
And if the latest polling is any indication, voters may be giving her argument a serious look.
Watch Ben’s interview with Hallie Shoffner above, and if you haven’t yet, support our work by joining as a paid subscriber today.
