The 2026 partisan primary elections were a success for Pulaski County Democrats. In even better news for the party, the primary election results appear to show a county hungry for change and a Democratic electorate fired up for November.

The March 3 results were the first time since the blue wave election of 2018 during President Trump’s first term that Democratic voters in Pulaski County made up over 65% of the primary electorate in a non-presidential election year. Democrats notched 42,000 votes to Republicans 19,000. And in Pulaski County at least, total voter turnout was 9% higher than it was in the last blue wave in 2018.

With the results of the March elections set to be certified Friday evening by the Pulaski County Election Commission, now feels like a good time to take a look at how the blue wave reshaped the electorate and outcomes of prominent Pulaski County races from the previous midterm primary in 2022. There will even be a couple of maps thrown in for fun.

Wendell Griffen crushes Barry Hyde

Former circuit court judge and progressive provocateur Wendell Griffen threw his hat into the Democratic primary to challenge longtime incumbent county judge Barry Hyde. The county judge role in each county isn’t actually a judicial role but it’s more like a county executive, or even like the mayor of the whole county. Hyde wanted Democratic voters in the county to give him the nod to pursue a fourth four-year term in office.

Griffen — an attorney, pastor, and progressive activist who challenged and beleaguered conservative leaders in Arkansas in his previous  role as an outspoken circuit judge — posed an immediate threat to Hyde’s reelection ambitions  due to his deep connections in Pulaski County and strong name recognition. Still, few  predicted Griffen would defeat Hyde in a landslide in the Democratic primary, capturing 62% of the vote and winning 107 out of 132 precincts in the county.

Griffen united a coalition of both rural and urban Democrats, running up huge margins in Black neighborhoods in Little Rock while also winning over Democrats in more rural parts of the county. Perhaps Griffen’s vocal opposition to a controversial zoning reform plan backed by Hyde helped him in the more rural parts of the county. He also carried Maumelle, Sherwood, North Little Rock and large swaths of West Little Rock.

Hyde only managed to win by small margins in many of the white progressive neighborhoods in the heart of Little Rock; Lakewood; some West Little Rock precincts;  a wealthier, conservative neighborhood in Jacksonville and a rural precinct in north Pulaski County. This despite outside groups affiliated with Gov. Sarah Sanders pumping money into messaging campaigns promoting Hyde.

Ultimately, it seems Democrats around the county were far more interested in Griffen’s message of change, transparency, and an outspoken commitment to liberal values and social justice.

With his primary victory, Griffen seems to be the favorite to be elected county judge in one of Arkansas’ last remaining consistently blue counties. He will face Republican candidate Michael Rushin, a businessman, in the November election.

Forrest narrowly defeats Jones in Prosecutor’s race with a coalition of Black voters and white Democrats

The second big incumbent loss on March 3 was in a non-partisan judicial race where incumbent Prosecuting Attorney Will Jones, who was dogged by his revelation of an extramarital affair with his chief deputy, was up against a young, up-and-coming defense attorney, Bobby Forrest Jr. Due to the non-partisan nature of this race, it wasn’t clear initially how a Democratic voter surge might impact the outcome. Ultimately, the turnout helped Forrest by a wide margin.

Forrest secured victory over Jones by flipping several Little Rock precincts that four years earlier readily gave their support to Jones. Whether these primarily white Democrats were more interested in voting out Jones or more interested in Forrest’s message of balancing strong prosecution with criminal justice reform efforts is unknown,: but the results speak for themselves.

Forrest created a coalition of Black voters and white progressives to win by around 3,500 votes in Pulaski County — securing a large enough cushion to buttress his 900-vote loss in Perry County, which is the other part of the 6th Judicial District. Jones’ losses in Hillcrest, Cammack Village, Pulaski Heights, Midtown, and Pleasant Valley were bad enough for his chances. But they were compounded by Forrest receiving huge margins of victory in Black neighborhoods like Otter Creek, Pecan Lake, Wakefield, Wrightsville, Alexander, and other Little Rock precincts south of Interstate 630. 

Forrest’s margin over Jones in 2026 mirrors Jones’ margin over his first opponent, Alicia Walton, in the 2022 election.

Forrest also cut into Jones’ margins in Lakewood and West Little Rock with the help of astronomical Democratic turnout, which was critical to his defeat of the incumbent. In 2022, the average Democratic makeup of a Pulaski County precinct was just 47%, but in 2026, the average Democratic makeup of a precinct’s voters was 68%. And Forrest overwhelmingly won every precinct where 65% or more of the voters opted to pick up a Democratic ballot rather than a Republican one.

Jones, on the other hand, struggled to locate any big-name endorsements. He did receive a sizeable amount of financial backing from outside groups  affiliated with Gov. Sanders’ political universe, though it’s unclear if that was any help in the end.

Democrats flip House District 70

In a night of favorable results, Democrats’ crowning achievement might have been  finally flipping the House seat formerly held by Rep. Carlton Wing (R-North Little Rock). The seat, which includes parts ofNorth Little Rock and Sherwood, was filled in a March 3 special election after Wing decided to resign to run the newly rebranded Arkansas TV public broadcasting station. Wing won his last election against Democrat Alex Holladay in 2024 by the skin of his teeth, winning by only 286 votes.

With Wing’s resignation, Holladay jumped into the special election and routed Republican Bo Renshaw with 57% of the vote. Because the special election was only to fill the remaining nine months of Wing’s term, however, Holladay also ran in and won the Democratic primary for the seat for the term that begins in 2027. He will face Renshaw again in the November election to see if he can hold the seat for Democrats for two more years.

Holladay ran up the score in the Park Hill and Lakewood precincts that he won in 2024, while also flipping four precincts he lost to Wing and holding Renshaw’s margin down in Sherwood and a wealthier part of Lakewood. Overall, Holladay’s huge win coupled with sky high Democratic turnout suggests Renshaw may be on his back foot for the November rematch.

Challenges Ahead for Shoffner and Jones

Both Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner and Democratic U.S. House candidate Chris Jones cruised to victory over their opponents in their respective Democratic primaries in Pulaski County and beyond, but the numbers show a tough road ahead for both candidates. Despite 2026 shaping up to be a blue wave across the country, in both Arkansas’s second Congressional District (where Jones is challenging Congressman French Hill (R-Little Rock)) and across the state generally (where Shoffner will face Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Little Rock), Republican primary voting dwarfed Democratic turnout.

Though Cotton and Hill faced little known challengers in their respective primaries, both men cruised to victory and racked up more votes than Shoffner and Jones, respectively. While the second congressional district, which is centered on Little Rock, is widely seen to be the most competitive congressional district in the state, gerrymandering and the conservative counterbalance of outlying counties in the district will make unseating Hill very challenging for Jones.

Additional troubling signs for Jones include a far smaller base of support in Faulkner and Saline counties than what Hill was able to boast in his primary election. Jones will likely need to narrow Hill’s margins from the incumbent’s 2024 race against Marcus Jones substantially in those counties to be competitive. In 2024, Hill won 70% of the vote in Saline County and 66% percent of the vote in Faulkner, which are the second- and third-largest counties in the district behind Pulaski. Both counties will likely see upwards of 50,000 voters in November.

Similarly, Cotton received 229,000 of the 281,000 votes cast in the Republican primary, while Shoffner only claimed 102,000 votes to Democratic opponent Ethan Dunbar’s 28,000. Though their margins of victory were similar, based purely on the primary turnout numbers, Cotton seems to be starting with about a 150,000 vote lead on Shoffner heading into November.

Democrats can at least take solace in the fact that Shoffner won more votes than Cotton in Washington County,  the third-largest county in the state in the rapidly growing Northwest Arkansas metro area. No Democrat has won statewide in Arkansas since 2010, so Shoffner supporters knew they faced an uphill climb already. But Cotton’s impressive turnout in an uncompetitive election should not be disregarded. Democrats may feel more confident due to the competitive Supreme Court race between Sanders-backed Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Bronni and his competitor John Adams, where Bronni only won statewide by 10 points. But despite the partisan undertones of the race, Bronni and Adams didn’t have  Republican or Democrat in front of their names on the ballot.