WASHINGTON (AP) — Arkansas voters will choose nominees for a full slate of federal, state and local offices in primary elections Tuesday.
The winners will face off in November’s midterm elections in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2010. Besides statewide positions, Republicans also occupy the state’s four U.S. House seats and hold lopsided majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature.
Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton faces two primary opponents in his bid for a third term. The Democratic nominee will be either Lewisville Mayor Ethan Dunbar or farmer and small business owner Hallie Shoffner.
Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders seeks a second term in 2026, but she is running unopposed in the primary. The state’s Republican lieutenant governor, attorney general, auditor and treasurer also face no primary challengers in their reelection bids.
State Sen. Fred Love and magazine publisher Supha Xayprasith-Mays seek the Democratic nomination to unseat Sanders in November. Xayprasith-Mays also ran in 2022 but placed a distant fourth in the Democratic primary.
Contested primaries will also be held for secretary of state, commissioner of state lands, two U.S. House seats and more than two dozen state Senate and state House seats.
Competitive statewide nomination contests have been relatively rare in Arkansas in recent years. Cotton was unopposed in his 2014 and 2020 primaries, and Sanders and Republican U.S. Sen. John Boozman won their 2022 primaries with 83% and 66% of the vote, respectively.
The state’s most populous county is Pulaski, home to Little Rock. As Arkansas’ most Democratic-friendly area – Vice President Kamala Harris posted her best performance in the state there in the 2024 presidential race – Pulaski and other Democratic-leaning counties tend to play more of a decisive role in Democratic primaries than in Republican ones.
Then-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida won more than a third of the Pulaski vote in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, enough to carry the county against a crowded field. But despite his strong performances there and in the next-most populous county, Benton, in northwest Arkansas, Rubio still placed third statewide behind fellow Republicans Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Pulaski was Trump’s worst county in the 2016 primary, but eight years later he carried it along with all other Arkansas counties in his 2024 primary against former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.
In Arkansas, if no one receives more than 50% of the primary vote, the top two finishers advance to a March 31 runoff.
The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.
Arkansas does not have automatic recounts, but candidates may request and pay for one, with the costs refunded if the outcome changes. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.
Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:
Polls close at 7:30 p.m. local time, which is 8:30 p.m. ET.
The AP will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House Districts 2 and 4, secretary of state, commissioner of state lands, state Senate and state House, as well as for a nonpartisan state Supreme Court seat and special elections for state Senate District 26 and state House District 70.
Arkansas allows but does not require voters to register by party. State law lets each party decide certain eligibility requirements to vote in their primaries. In 2026, state Democrats allow registered Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries, but Republicans last June adopted a rule barring registered Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.
As of the November 2024 general election, there were about 1.8 million registered voters in Arkansas.
About 348,000 voters participated in the 2022 Republican primary, and about 94,000 in the Democratic primary. About 49% of Republican primary votes and about 52% of Democratic primary votes were cast before primary day.
In this year’s contest, more than 61,000 Democratic primary ballots and about 125,500 Republican primary ballots had already been cast as of Saturday.
In the 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary, the AP first reported results at 8:45 p.m. ET, or 15 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 3:11 a.m. ET with about 98% of total votes counted.
In previous elections, counties tended to release all or nearly all results from early and absentee voting in the first vote update of the night, before any in-person Election Day results were released.
As of Tuesday, there will be 245 days until the 2026 midterm elections.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/hub/elections.
FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2011 file photo, an American and Arkansas flag blow in the wind as snow falls in Fayetteville, Ark. (AP Photo/Beth Hall, File)
