November 4, 2014 (2014-11-04) 2020 → 56.5% 39.4% | 478,819 334,174 Start date November 4, 2014 | |
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Winner Tom Cotton | ||
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.
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Incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Pryor ran for re-election to a third term in office. He was unopposed in the Democratic primary; U.S. Representative Tom Cotton was also unopposed for the Republican nomination. Cotton defeated Pryor by a wider-than-expected margin in the general election; most outlets called the race for Cotton within half an hour after the polls closed. This marks the first time since Reconstruction that Republicans hold both Senate seats in Arkansas, and where the Arkansas congressional delegation is entirely Republican.
Background
Arkansas Attorney General Mark Pryor was first elected to the Senate in 2002, defeating first-term Republican incumbent Tim Hutchinson. He was re-elected with 80% of the vote in 2008 as he was unopposed by a Republican candidate. He faced competition only from Green Party nominee Rebekah Kennedy, who won the largest share of the vote of any Green Party candidate in a Senate race in history. Of the 88 previous occasions when an incumbent Senator was re-elected without major party opposition and then went on to contest the following general election, all 88 were successfully re-elected.
Heading into the 2014 Cotton vs Pryor matchup, only 17 House freshmen have been elected to the U.S. Senate over the last century, and just two in the last 40 years. In the 2014 cycle, Cotton and Montana’s Steve Daines became the 18th and 19th freshmen to win U.S. Senate races since 1914.
Democratic primary
Pryor was unopposed for the Democratic nomination.
Declared
Declined
Republican primary
Cotton was unopposed for the Republican nomination.