General election runoffs in Arkansas basically don’t exist, and that’s not an accident

There seems to be a general assumption that, in any election with more than two candidates, if someone doesn’t receive at least 50% of the vote plus one, there will be a runoff election to decide the winner. It’s an understandable assumption to make; the very concept of representative democracy is predicated on the idea that the winner is whomever gets a bare majority of votes.

Arkansans are familiar with the concept, too, with primary races frequently going to runoffs when there are three or more candidates. The most recent cycle of primaries even featured a runoff for the Republican nomination for Secretary of State. So it makes total sense that Arkansans would assume that general elections functioned the same way.

When it comes to general elections in Arkansas, however, that assumption is largely incorrect. Whether because of the state constitution, the federal Constitution or state statute, almost none of the three-person races on an Arkansas general election ballot will ever go to a runoff, regardless of how the votes turn out on Election Day.

Constitutional Offices

Arkansas has seven constitutional offices that make up the executive branch: governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor, land commissioner and attorney general. Both the state constitution and state law prevent candidates for any of these offices — except possibly candidates for land commissioner — from having to worry about a runoff. 

Article 6, section 3 of the Arkansas Constitution says Arkansas’ governor, treasurer, auditor and attorney general “shall be elected by the qualified electors of the state at large” and “the person having the highest number of votes, for each of the respective offices, shall be declared” the winner. Even in the event of a literal tie between two candidates, this constitutional provision means voters have no additional say in the matter, and it’s up to the Legislature to pick a winner:

[I]f two or more shall be equal, and highest in votes for the same office, one of them shall be chosen by the joint vote of both houses of the General Assembly, and a majority of all the members elected shall be necessary to a choice.

Amendment 6 to the state constitution also addresses the election of the state’s governor and lieutenant governor. It says explicitly that the winner of each seat shall be the person “having the highest number of votes” for each seat.

Arkansas statutes are even broader. Under Ark. Code Ann. 7-5-705, the winners of races for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor and attorney general are the candidates “having the greatest number of legal votes for each of the respective offices,” with no requirement that “the greatest number” be a majority of the votes cast in that race. This statute also gives the Legislature the power to pick a winner in the event of a tie vote in one of these races.

The only constitutional office not explicitly included in these laws is land commissioner. But that does not mean that a three-way race for that office is any more likely to wind up in a runoff. Land commissioner was created by the Legislature in 1868 pursuant to Article 6, section 1 of the state constitution. Nothing in the statute creating the position requires election to the seat via a majority of votes, and the state’s default position is that no majority is required to win unless there is a law requiring it.

About the only conceivable way that a land commissioner race could wind up in a runoff would be if there was a tie between the top two vote-getters (regardless of whether there are two or more than two candidates in the race). In that scenario, under Ark. Code Ann. 7-5-704(b), those two would face off in a runoff election to be held four weeks after Election Day.

State Legislature

Here’s an interesting fact about Arkansas election law: While there are statutes expressly requiring that a primary election for state Legislature be won by a majority of the votes cast, there is nothing requiring the same for general election winners. So, just like with the land commissioner situation, the default is that it only takes a plurality to win a seat in the state General Assembly.

The result is a strange system where three or more candidates of the same party running in a primary for state Legislature have to get at least a simple majority or, failing that, continue to campaign for an additional month to try to win over more of their partisan supporters in a primary runoff, while three or more candidates of differing parties in a general election face no such hurdle and can win with a bare plurality of the votes cast. A legislative race with three candidates could be won with just over one-third of the votes cast, leaving a district represented by someone who nearly two-thirds of the district voted against. 

Also as with the land commissioner seat, the one exception to this is where two candidates are tied. In that very narrow circumstance, state law calls for a runoff.

While all of that sounds bad and undemocratic in theory, it’s probably less of a big deal in practice. A quick review of election results going back decades did not turn up a single instance of a legislative seat being won with less than a majority of votes cast. Neither Max Brantley nor Ernie Dumas could recall this ever being an issue in their combined century-plus of observing Arkansas elections either.

U.S. Congress

Arkansas, like all but six states, chooses winners in the general election for U.S. House and Senate seats via plurality vote. Much like with land commissioner and state legislative seats, this is a result of state law not imposing a higher standard.

Ark. Code Ann. 7-5-703, governing election to federal legislative offices in Arkansas, says the secretary of state must, within 30 days of the election, present the results of the federal elections to the governor. At that point, “the Governor shall immediately thereafter issue his or her proclamation declaring the person having the greatest number of legal votes to be duly elected to represent this state in the United States Senate or the United States House of Representatives.”

There is some question as to how much a state can meddle with election requirements to federal offices. When Arkansas tried to impose term limits on members of U.S. Congress in 1992, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court struck that down, ruling that states cannot impose qualifications on members of Congress that are higher than what the U.S. Constitution specifies.

Despite that ruling, six states currently do something other than plurality general elections for Congress members. In Washington and California, all candidates take part in a single primary, with the top two, regardless of party affiliation, advancing to the general election. Alaska also puts all candidates into a single primary, with the top four advancing to the general election, where instant-runoff voting determines the winner. Maine uses instant-runoff voting both in partisan primaries and in the general election. Georgia and Louisiana simply have the top two vote-getters in November face off in a runoff election. 

Municipal/County Offices

Local elections in Arkansas also generally use plurality elections, but with a twist — to avoid a runoff, a municipal candidate must (a) get at least 40% of the votes cast and (b) have a lead of at least 20 points over the candidate who finishes second. Little Rock voters have seen this in action in recent years. 

In 2018, Frank Scott Jr. received 37% of the vote in a five-person race for Little Rock Mayor. Because Scott did not reach 40%, he and Baker Kurrus, who received about 5,500 fewer votes than Scott, advanced to a December runoff that year, which Scott won.

On the other hand, when Ken Richardson won election to the city board in 2006, he did so with just under 48% of the vote. He avoided a runoff in that race because second-place Maudella Morehead managed just under 27%.

Overall, while the minimum-vote threshold and required margin of victory in municipal races make a runoff slightly more likely in these races than they are in legislative or statewide races, runoffs are still not particularly common in local races either. 

Just using Little Rock as an example, Scott’s 2018 race is the only mayoral election since 2006 to require a runoff. Former Mayor Mark Stodola won without a runoff in 2006, taking 48% of the vote to second-place Barbara Graves’ 24%. Stodola won by a landslide in 2010, taking 85% of the vote, and he was unopposed in 2014. (Worth noting, perhaps: Scott, who received 49.8% of the vote in 2022, would have faced a runoff against Steve Landers (38%), but Landers conceded on Election Night.)

Conclusion

In the halcyon, pre-2010 days of Arkansas being largely a one-party state, a common refrain was that whoever won the Democratic primary in most races essentially had won the whole election. That was largely true, for better or worse. These days, in many districts around this very red state, the same could be said about Republican primaries.

Both the majority requirement in primaries and the plurality winner in the general across the state’s elections is largely a vestige of those old single-party days. Having fought to get a majority of partisan voters just to make it to the general election, no politician wants to then have to battle for a majority of votes in a race against more than one other person. It’s the same broad line of thinking that also helps explain why Arkansas does not allow write-in candidacies and why it’s so difficult for third parties to get on the ballot in the first place.

Whether this system is good, bad or irrelevant in the grand scheme of things is open for debate.