2014 United States Senate election in Arkansas
Open-knowledge reference entry
The 2014 United States Senate election in Arkansas was held on November 4, 2014, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Arkansas, concurrently with the election of the Governor of Arkansas, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
This was one of the seven Democratic-held Senate seats up for election in a state that Mitt Romney won in the 2012 presidential election. After facing only Green Party opposition in 2008, incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Pryor sought re-election to a third term in 2014. He was unopposed in the Democratic primary; U.S. Representative Tom Cotton was also unopposed for the Republican nomination. While the race was initially expected to be close, Cotton prevailed by a margin of 56% to 39%. The Associated Press called the race for Cotton immediately after the polls closed. Cotton's margin exceeded almost all published opinion polling; for most of the cycle, it was seen as one of the most competitive races in the nation.
This is the last time a Senator from Arkansas lost re-election. Since Cotton took office in 2015, Republicans have held both of Arkansas' Senate seats and the state's entire congressional delegation, both of which had not happened since 1877. Pryor drew many comparisons to Blanche Lincoln, also a Democratic senator from Arkansas who was ultimately unseated in 2010, with Pryor receiving a similar fate.
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