Arkansas Election Line: AR2 “Leans Griffin”
Arkansas Election Line, a joint project with Roby Brock of Talk Business and Blake Rutherford of Blake’s Think Tank, is rating the race in the Second Congressional District between Republican Tim Griffin and Democratic State Sen. Joyce Elliott. Right now, we consider this race to be “Leans Griffin.”
We fully expect that the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as well as a plethora of other groups will spend considerable resources battling for the open seat of retiring Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder. This will most likely have the effect of making this race fluid; however the present conservative anti-Obama tilt of the country will favor Griffin.
Griffin and Elliott present a clear right versus left contrast for the district. 
Both candidates will be embraced and supported by their party’s base. The battle will be for turn out and more importantly for independent voters. The geography of the district will likely have Elliott performing extremely well in Pulaski County with Griffin winning most of the other seven counties. However, with over half the votes coming from Pulaski County, Griffin will have to performance strong enough in the other six counties to overcoming her margins. To do this, he will need to over perform in Saline and Faulkner Counties.
The two things to watch as the race unfolds is the ability of the each campaign – or probably more importantly outside groups supporting the respective campaigns – to influence the favorability of their opponent. Expect efforts to be made to connect Elliott with the Obama Administration and Griffin with the Bush Administration. If both groups are successful in doing this, in the current political climate, Griffin wins this one.