Arkansas is about as Republican as states get. Nearly two out of three voters backed Donald Trump in 2024 and Sen. Tom Cotton in 2020. Yet with Election Day close, a handful of Democrats are crisscrossing the state convinced that voters are ready for something new.

Senate hopeful Hallie Shoffner spent Friday working a lunch crowd at a burger joint in Hope. She told diners that the label that matters most to her is not Democrat but Arkansan. She calls her challenge to Cotton the sleeper race nobody sees coming.

Shoffner is a farmer whose family had worked the land for generations. She closed the operation in 2025, blaming rising costs along with tariff and trade policies. That decision pushed her to run. She says farm towns like the one she grew up in have been left behind while people far away make the rules.

A campaign on its own terms

She has not drawn big outside money from national Democratic groups and says she does not want it. Her pitch centers on record diesel prices, the war with Iran, tariffs and a Congress she calls historically unproductive. At a farm in Bierne the Hatley family cooked sorghum into syrup and explained why they plan to vote for her.

Republicans are not taking chances. They have poured millions into the Senate race and into the Little Rock-based 2nd Congressional District along with get-out-the-vote drives. Election forecasters still rate the Senate seat as safe for the GOP and the House seat as likely Republican.

A familiar name in Little Rock

In that House race Chris Jones is trying again to unseat longtime Rep. French Hill. Jones ran for governor in 2022 and lost to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, which means many voters already know his name. National Democrats list him as one of their top targets to flip.

Jones spent Friday night at an outdoor jazz show at a Little Rock brewery between stops at polling sites and a high school homecoming game. He says families cannot afford gas or groceries and that his campaign is about affordability and accountability. He reminds voters that only about 15 years ago the state's whole delegation in Washington was Democratic.

He has drawn visits from Pete Buttigieg, Jaime Harrison and Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas. Govs. JB Pritzker and Andy Beshear have endorsed him.

Jones also points to strong Black turnout across the South after a Supreme Court ruling weakened part of the Voting Rights Act. He believes people now see their right to vote as under threat and are showing up because of it.