Arkansas · Governor
election 2026-11-03 · forecast as of 2026-10-01 · margins and probabilities are for Fredrick Love
Who is running?
Fredrick Love (Democratic), Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Republican), Colt Shelby (Libertarian). The margin below is Fredrick Love minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.
The race, in brief
Arkansas elects a governor on November 3, 2026. The state profile records a median age of 38.4, a college share of 0.3 and a white non-Hispanic share of 0.7.
Republican incumbent Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor since 2023, is seeking a second term and was renominated unopposed in the March 3, 2026 primary. The Democratic nominee is Fredrick Love, state senator from SD-15 since 2023, who beat businesswoman Supha Xayprasith-Mays with 81.0% of the vote. The Libertarian nominee is Colt Shelby, a farmer.
Every rater listed (Cook, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, Inside Elections, RealClearPolitics, Sabato's Crystal Ball, Silver Bulletin) says R; Sabato's entry is dated September 4, 2025. One general-election poll is recorded: Hendrix College, sponsored by Talk Business & Politics, August 11–12, 2026, had Sanders 45%, Love 40%, Shelby 7%, with 8% undecided.
A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.
The facts, each beside its sentence
Republican incumbent Sarah Huckabee Sanders is seeking a second term. She is being challenged by Democratic state senator Fredrick Love.
Republican incumbent Sarah Huckabee Sanders is seeking a second term.
She is being challenged by Democratic state senator Fredrick Love.
Huckabee Sanders secured the Republican nomination unopposed.
Fredrick Love, state senator from SD-15 (2023–present)
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, incumbent governor (2023–present)
Love defeated businesswoman Xayprasith-Mays in the Democratic primary with 81.0% of the vote.
The Cook Political Report R August 27, 2026 Decision Desk HQ R September 23, 2026
August 11–12, 2026 1,217 (LV) ± 4.7% |45% 40% 7% 8%
Colt Shelby, farmer
Not in the source: No fundraising figures for either general-election candidate in the text.; facts.forecast rows have no basis field, so the input does not say whether the model used the Hendrix College poll.; facts.candidates marks Sanders as incumbent: false, which contradicts the text.; Rater labels are 'R' only, with no Lean/Likely/Safe detail; Sabato's rating is a year old (September 4, 2025).; No previous-result figures (2022 margin) or campaign narrative; endorsement sections are empty.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as bc8218dbd2c5; written by claude-opus-5-5 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | R+28.6 | R+28.4 | R+31.3 |
A shift of 2.8 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.
The state in numbers
| Measure | State | Average state | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+, 2023 | 25.1% | 34.0% | -8.9 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 68.4% | 66.3% | +2.1 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 14.8% | 10.1% | +4.8 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino, 2023 | 8.8% | 12.9% | -4.1 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 1.5% | 4.4% | -2.8 pts |
| Foreign-born, 2023 | 5.2% | 9.6% | -4.4 pts |
| Median age, 2023 | 38.4 | 39.1 | -0.68 |
| Median household income, 2023 | $58,773 | $77,633 | $-18,860 |
| Median home value, 2023 | $175,300 | $314,132 | $-138,832 |
| Owner-occupied homes, 2023 | 66.1% | 67.4% | -1.2 pts |
| Unemployment (ACS), 2023 | 5.1% | 4.8% | +0.3 pts |
| Federal government workers, 2023 | 2.2% | 3.0% | -0.9 pts |
| Work from home, 2023 | 7.8% | 12.3% | -4.5 pts |
| Households on SNAP, 2023 | 10.5% | 11.1% | -0.6 pts |
| Households with Social Security income, 2023 | 34.9% | 32.1% | +2.8 pts |
| Households with public assistance income, 2023 | 1.9% | 2.6% | -0.7 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year, 2023 | 2.4% | 2.9% | -0.4 pts |
| Gini index, 2023 | 0.48 | 0.47 | +0.01 |
| Unemployment, latest month (BLS), 2026-07 | 4.4% | 4.0% | +0.4 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months, 2026-07 | -0.2 pts | -0.1 pts | -0.0 pts |
| Change since the last election (24 months), 2026-07 | +0.3 pts | -0.1 pts | +0.4 pts |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $59,320 | $70,662 | $-11,342 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 35.6% | 32.4% | +3.3 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 23.2% | 19.4% | +3.8 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 7.6% | 6.1% | +1.5 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 5.5% | 4.4% | +1.1 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 5.5% | 3.8% | +1.7 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.4% | 0.6% | -0.2 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.5% | 0.3% | +0.2 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.3% | 0.9% | +0.4 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.2% | 1.5% | -0.3 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.9% | 1.2% | -0.3 pts |
ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.
Who is ahead, and by how much?
Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.
How likely is each to win?
Monte Carlo error is ±0.2 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.
How wide is the range?
Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -28.8 and +6.5 points. Election day: -35.0 to +2.7. The election-day interval is 2.4 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.
What is the uncertainty made of?
Total sd 11.53 points, made of latent opinion 65%, race-specific polling error 19%, drift to election day 12%, correlated polling error 4%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.
What evidence is this built on?
1 polls, most recent 2026-08-12. 100% verified against a primary source.
What changed since the last run?
Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Fredrick Love ahead of Colt Shelby. Over 13 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -10.6 points. There were 6 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.
Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls. Of that, +0.00 points came from +0 poll(s), +3.49 from the shorter horizon, and -3.49 from the model specification.
How has this model done before?
Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.
Where did every number come from?
Nowcast run 8bbb1156-6cf0-4ca5-becd-87beaf1b8bc7 and election-day run a7222d06-29e4-4313-8265-d972cf53d823, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.