Democrat Hallie Schoffner Leads in Arkansas Senate Race
The MeidasTouch Podcast
The MeidasTouch Podcast highlights Democrat Hallie Schaffner's surprising lead in the Arkansas Senate race, challenging the notion of Arkans
Key takeaways
- Schaffner leads 47% to 44% in Arkansas Senate race, a significant shift from the state's traditionally Republican leanings.
- Independent voters favor Schaffner 59% to 29%, indicating widespread dissatisfaction with current leadership.
Main topics
- Arkansas Senate race dynamics
- Farmer economic crisis and policy failures
Notable quotes
'You cut me open and I'm purple. You don't have to change your party to want to change your senator.'
Conclusion
Hallie Schaffner's campaign reflects a growing movement in Arkansas where voters are rejecting
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) Donald Trump getting a rude awakening in ruby red Arkansas before the midterms where he is in full collapse mode. Folks, his approval right now, net negative 14 in Arkansas heading into the midterms and Donald Trump's MAGA stooges not faring much better in the latest Hendricks College poll for Arkansas. The Democratic candidate, Kelly Schaffner, leads 47%. to 44%, a three-point lead for a Democratic Senate candidate in what was once believed to be ruby red Arkansas. And when you look at the crosstabs here, they tell quite the story. Amongst independents, Haley Schaffner leads 59 % to 29%. When you look at Trump's overall approval, dismal. Trump's approval on the economy, dismal. Trump's approval on the Iran war dismal. This also comes at the same time there was a Reuters Ipsos poll showing just 13 % of Americans strongly approve of Trump. That's it, just 13 % nationwide. So for all those people saying, what's going on America? Only 13 % of all people in the United States strongly approve. I still don't know who those 13.5%. are the arkansas times reports schaffner takes lee against cotton yes you read that right and then when you get into some of the uh analysis that's being done here in this latest hendrix poll um here's how people describe tom cotton the mega republican senate stooge aloof out of touch rarely spends time in the state. And as this Arkansas Times article says, it's starting to add up for this MAGA Republican stooge, two-term Senator Cotton. I want to bring in Haley Schaffner right now, the Democratic candidate for that United States Senate seat. Sixth generation farmer. You know the state. Your family's grown up in the state. You're with the people of the state. Oftentimes I do these reports and people say, Ben, don't give us this hopium, Arkansas's ruby red, don't do the Trump's collapsing in Arkansas story and get our hopes up. But Haley, there's a lot of momentum that people really need to be paying attention to around your campaign. Can you talk about it? Speaker 1 (2:22) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the poll really just confirms what we already knew. It actually mirrored an independent poll, not an independent poll, it mirrored a poll that we did internally. two weeks ago. And it also mirrors what we're seeing on the ground, which is our Kansans are very independent minded. In fact, most of our voters aren't even registered with the party. And 15 years ago, we elected a Democrat as governor and he won all 75 counties. When I'm traveling around the state and I'm talking to folks who are either Republican or Democrat, in fact, a lot of them say, you know what, you cut me open and I'm purple. You don't have to change your party. to want to change your senator. We're all looking at the past 12 years of Tom Cotton and realizing that Washington is absolutely not working for us. Speaker 2 (3:12) Sixth generation farmer. Seems that every day the Trump regime does something new to attack farmers. Announces this week the new policy is central planning communism, but... For the benefit of mystery foreign countries, we're going to