A hopeful sign


When I drive around Fort Smith and surrounding areas in Arkansas, I've noticed a few Harris-Walz yard signs - certainly more than I saw for Biden-Harris in 2020 or Clinton-Kaine in 2016. I am also seeing far fewer Trump signs and flags this time around. There are still people who show up with their Trump-Vance signs, but it's nothing like 2020 and 2016. I have yet to see the usual Ford F-150s and F-350s with huge Trump flags hogging the roads as in years past. Now, I don't doubt that Trump will have many in my community who vote for him, but the enthusiasm that I see on the ground is just not there for Trump this time around. At least not yet. As I've mentioned before, when I go to my county Democratic meetings, that room is packed. Good luck finding a parking spot at Creekmore Park when we all get together. That never happened in any prior election year. Something is changing, even if we are still going to be a red state when all is said and done.

I'll share with you a poll. Polling in my state is mediocre at best. I will take the results from the Talk Business poll released a few days ago with a few grains of salt. That said, it does show Kamala Harris leading Trump in two of our state's four Congressional districts: the Second District, which Pulaski County and some surrounding counties in central Arkansas, and the Third District, which includes my city and the cities that make up Northwest Arkansas. Trump still wins handily outside our two counties. Here's the thing: Biden also had a slight lead in the Second Congressional district (CD-2) in 2020 and still ended up losing those districts once all was said and done. So, it is quite possible (or even probably) that the survey is underestimating Trump's support statewide. But it is also possible we are seeing some cracks in Trump's support even here. We'll see once the votes are counted. In the meantime, we have two great Democratic Congressional candidates in my district (CD-3) and in the second district (CD-2). I hope at least one of them wins, but even just a scenario where we improve over previous electoral cycles and break the GOP supermajority in the state legislature, I would consider that an excellent start, given who dire our situation was just a small handful of years ago.


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