Roby Brock at Talk Business began releasing results today from a robopoll he and Hendrix College conducted of about 600 Arkansans lastweek, including me.

Key findings:

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US. SENATE

Mark Pryor, 42%
Tom Cotton, 41
Don’t know, 17.

BLAME FOR GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

President Obama and the Democrats 40
Republicans in Congress 35
Both are equally to blame  24
Don’t Know  1

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APPROVAL/DISAPPROVAL OBAMA

Approve 34
Disapprove 62
Don’t know 4

APPROVAL/DISAPPROVAL MARK PRYOR

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Approve 34
Disapprove 48
Don’t know 18

Grim for Democrats, but could be worse. At least Pryor doesn’t start behind. At least he has a proven extremist for an opponent, unlike the plain vanilla John Boozman who took down Blanche Lincoln.

It does look like all-Obama-all-the-time remains a good strategy for the Republican Party. If a plurality of Arkansans can blame him rather than the Tea Party Republicans for the government shutdown, there’s nothing they won’t believe. The rest of the country sees things differently. Secede!

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Jay Barth, commenting on the poll, sees a Pryor silver lining. With anti-Obama and anti-Washington feeling as strong as it is, it’s somewhat remarkable that he has a lead (nominal, it’s an effective dead heat) at all. Obama’s disapproval rating is about where it’s always been. Voters ARE differentiating between him and Obama and Cotton is not dominating among independents, Brock notes.

Brock doesn’t say if he’ll roll out the gubernatorial question tomorrow or not. UPDATE: He’ll release them tonight at 10 p.m. on his Talk Business show on Fox 16, unless a baseball game pushes the show back a while.


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