Republican senators slip in new polls from Arkansas and Idaho, two of Donald Trump’s strongest states in the 2024 presidential election

Republican senators are trailing or running close to their challengers in polls from Arkansas and Idaho, two states that gave President Donald Trump some of his largest margins of victory in the 2024 presidential election.

In Arkansas, a Talk Business & Politics-Hendrix College poll found Democratic Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner leading Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, 47.4 percent to 44 percent. Libertarian Jeff Wadlin had 3 percent, while 5.6 percent were undecided. The survey of 1,217 likely voters was conducted by text message, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.

In Idaho, independent Senate candidate Todd Achilles led three-term Republican Sen. Jim Risch, 38 percent to 33 percent, in a head-to-head matchup from a Bullfinch Group survey. Twenty-nine percent were undecided. The poll also found Risch with 32 percent approval and 39 percent disapproval, while 39 percent viewed him favorably and 44 percent unfavorably.

Two of Trump’s Best States

Both results are notable because of how dominant Trump’s showing was in each state during the 2024 election. Trump carried Arkansas by 30.6 percentage points, winning 64.2 percent of the vote to Kamala Harris‘s 33.6 percent — the largest Republican presidential margin in the state since Richard Nixon‘s landslide in 1972. Idaho was even more lopsided: Trump won 66.9 percent there to Harris’s 30.4 percent, trailing only Wyoming, West Virginia and North Dakota among all states for his highest vote share.

According to Associated Press figures, Trump’s 10 highest state vote shares in the 2024 election were led by Wyoming at 71.6 percent, followed by West Virginia at 70.0 percent and North Dakota at 67.0 percent. Idaho came in fourth at 66.9 percent, just ahead of Oklahoma at 66.2 percent. Rounding out the top 10 were Alabama at 64.6 percent, Kentucky at 64.5 percent and Arkansas and Tennessee, which tied at 64.2 percent apiece, followed by South Dakota at 63.4 percent.

The Arkansas race

Cotton, first elected in 2014, received support from 82 percent of Republicans in the Hendrix poll. Shoffner led among independents, 59 percent to 29 percent and also held advantages among women, younger voters and college graduates.

Talk Business & Politics Editor-in-Chief Roby Brock cautioned against reading too much into a single survey.

“Today, this race is a competitive one, but I believe we have miles of messaging to go before attitudes solidify,” Brock said, adding that “the amount of money likely to be poured into Arkansas to influence the outcome will be substantial.”

The outlet plans to continue polling the race through the lead-up to early voting.

Shoffner, a farmer making her first bid for federal office, defeated Lewisville Mayor Ethan Dunbar in the Democratic primary. Cotton defeated a minor primary challenger, Micah Ashby, to secure the Republican nomination for a third term, according to Ballotpedia. Democrats have not won a Senate election in Arkansas since 2008.

The Hendrix poll was quickly followed by a more favorable survey for Cotton. Republican-aligned firm JL Partners found Cotton leading Shoffner 51 percent to 35 percent in a poll completed August 18, according to polling aggregator PollingSource.

PollingSource’s rolling average showed Cotton ahead 48.5 percent to 39 percent, while Pollsmax had Cotton leading 49.3 percent to 38.3 percent across three polls. Pollsmax’s forecast gave Cotton a 99.9 percent chance of winning reelection and projected a final margin of roughly 33 points.

The Washington Examiner also reported that a follow-up poll showed Cotton ahead by 16 points.

Shoffner’s campaign has maintained that the race is moving in her direction despite the Republican-favorable polling. Campaign manager Anna-Lee Pittman told the Arkansas Times that Cotton’s financial advantage was intended to discourage challengers.

“For so long, the story has been that no one should even try, it doesn’t matter, nothing will ever change. It’s why a sitting senator amassed a $10 million war chest, to get everyone else to pre-surrender.”

The Idaho race

Risch, 83, has held statewide office in Idaho for roughly two decades and served as governor before entering the Senate in 2009.

His independent challenger, Todd Achilles, 58, is a former Boise-area state representative and Army veteran who left the Democratic Party in 2025 to run as an independent after resigning from the Idaho House. Achilles has raised nearly $700,000 and has built his campaign around dissatisfaction with both major parties.

“I’m speaking to roomfuls of Republicans who are just tired of the Idaho GOP and they’re ready for something new,” Achilles told the Idaho Capital Sun.

Polling has produced sharply different pictures of the race.

A Peak Insights survey commissioned by the Risch campaign and conducted June 6-7 among 500 likely voters showed Risch leading a five-way field with 55 percent support. His closest challenger, a Democrat, had 15 percent, according to material published on Risch’s campaign website.

A separate August poll released by the Risch campaign showed him ahead by 34 points, 52 percent to 18 percent, with Achilles behind two other minor candidates, according to East Idaho News.

By contrast, a Public Policy Polling survey commissioned by the Achilles campaign and conducted March 16-17 among 639 registered voters found Achilles within 4 points of Risch in a head-to-head matchup and showed weak approval ratings for the incumbent.

Risch has downplayed concerns about his age.

“there’s nothing I can do about it,” he told the Idaho Capital Sun, while acknowledging the demands of the job.

The issue became a flashpoint after the Achilles campaign purchased a Boise billboard reading “Happy 83rd Birthday” and referring to Risch as the state’s “oldest and richest” senator. The billboard was later removed from land connected to an investment company run by Risch and his wife.

“It looks like Senator Risch proudly stands for free speech — as long as it’s speech he agrees with,” Achilles said in a statement.

Boise State University political science professor Charles Hunt said the race has unusual characteristics compared with recent Idaho elections. He told East Idaho News that “interesting circumstances” have made the contest more competitive than previous cycles, even as the campaigns’ internal polling offers sharply different views of the race.

Why Senate polls can overstate Democrats

Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, co-founder of Echelon Insights, analyzed 3,312 Senate polls from the previous four election cycles using the former FiveThirtyEight polling archive.

Ruffini found that Democratic candidates’ eventual performance was overstated in every cycle. Across the surveys, the average error favored Democrats by 3.7 percentage points, while 73 percent of polls overstated their eventual performance, according to his analysis published on Substack.

The gap was largest during the summer, when the average pro-Democratic error approached six points in late July before narrowing to roughly 2.6 points by Election Day.

Newsweek reported that it contacted representatives for Cotton, Shoffner, Achilles and Risch for comment on the Hendrix and Bullfinch polls but had not received responses by time of publication.