It looks excellent, should be a net gain even if we have a Prez Romney with 47% approval.
But we haven’t cleaned up like that since 1980.
As I’ve often mentioned we’ve never beat more than 2 incumbents in any cycle since.
Pryor Jr. might retire?
The Republican shift in Arkansas has been dramatic (as I surmised more than a few years ago, it was Huckster’s reign as Governor that stopped the realignment dead in its tracks). Pryor has a huge target on his back (as does Landrieu in LA), and I suspect he may retire rather than get carried out like Blanche Lincoln did. By 2014, it will have been 12 years since Pryor ran a bonafide campaign (then against incumbent Tim Hutchinson), since the GOP gave him and most of the other races a pass in 2008. That’s a long time in a changing state.
The only truly formidable Democrat left in Arkansas is Gov. Beebe, and even he hasn’t been able to stop the slide against the Dems on his watch. If Pryor retires, the Dems will apply heavy pressure to Beebe to run. The question is whether Beebe would want to serve in a GOP majority Senate as a minority party backbencher.
In any event, it appears Little Rock Congressman Tim Griffin wants the seat, and he may get it (the downside, that district could go back to the Dems again as long as they don’t nominate a Black leftist as they did in 2010).