Sarah Huckabee Sanders leads by 10 in Arkansas governor race

Little Rock, Arkansas — Republican nominee Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a 10-point lead over the potential Democratic nominee, a new poll in the Arkansas governor’s race showed.

The poll, conducted by Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College, surveyed 961 likely Arkansas voters about the upcoming gubernatorial election.

43.5% of those polled would vote for Sanders if the election were held today while 34% would select the Democratic nominee.

There are five people currently running for the Democratic nomination for governor. That list includes Dr. Anthony Bland, Dr. Chris Jones, Jay Martin, James “Rus” Russell, and Supha Xayprasith-Mays.

The poll found that 7.5% would vote for a third party or independent candidate. Ricky Dale Harrington Jr. is running as the Libertarian Party candidate.

Sanders is the only Republican running in the race after Attorney General Leslie Rutledge dropped out of the race.

According to Dr. Jay Barth, a politics professor at Hendrix, Sander’s “monstrous fundraising” will “make her omnipresent as undecided voters begin to focus more fully on the race.”

“Sanders does show weakness with voters under 45 years of age, particularly with those under 30. However, she has solid margins with voters above 45 who disproportionately make up the electorate,” Barth said. “While significant percentages of the state’s African-American voters have expressed respect for the current Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, little such openness to Sanders is shown as she trails 72% to 3% with Black voters.”

According to Robert Coon, who works with Republican candidates, Sanders “outperforms a Democratic candidate with men by 15 percentage points, while the gap with female voters is 5 percentage points.”

The poll was conducted by online survey and by phone on February 7 and 8.