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Leading Off:
•AR-02: Arkansas has been a painful place for Democrats of late, but Team Blue got some genuinely good polling news out of the Razorback State on Monday from Talk Business and Hendrix College. In the open 2nd District, Democrat Pat Hays leads Republican French Hill 46-42, a reversal from July, when Hill held a narrow 44-43 edge. The numbers are also similar to a Hays internal from last month that hid him on top 44-41; Hill recently put out a press release claiming to have a 5-point lead in some invisible poll but provided no further details.
Hill, a wealthy banker, has suffered from some of the same image problems that have plagued other rich Republican vulture capitalists like Bruce Rauner, David Perdue, and Mitt Romney, and Democrats haven't hesitated to leverage his background in attack ads. Hays, by contrast, has run some great ads making the most of his personable, folks style. (The GOP playbook on Hays is utterly predictable: Obama Obama Obama.)
Both sides are spending heavily here, shelling out about $1 million apiece to date. This district is the bluest an Arkansas and like much of the state, it's ancestrally Democratic, so Democrats always believed they'd have a shot here. But given the party's woes at the top of the ticket and the president's deep unpopularity, it wouldn't have been surprising had the DCCC written the seat off. However, that's very much not the case, and Republicans are in serious danger of losing here, so Daily Kos Elections is changing our rating from Lean Republican to Tossup.
