While some of the changes in Arkansas' political landscape are obvious, others may not be.
Yes, the state is definitely redder than ever, given the Republican sweep of all federal and statewide offices and so much of the state Legislature. But it is also increasingly dominated by a comparative handful of counties where the majority of the state's voters are.
The story is in the numbers, which are reported on Secretary of State Mark Martin's web site. The numbers are unofficial still but complete and worth exploring.
Martin reported that 850,295 of the state's 1.69 million registered voters turned out for the recent election. That's a 50.3 percent turnout rate statewide.
We should all hope for better participation in elections, but having half the registered voters turn out is better than many past years. And, according to Martin's figures, voters in 49 of the 75 counties actually turned out at a rate of 50 percent or better.
Van Buren County, at 62.2 percent, did the best. But there were fewer than 6,000 votes cast there and 40 of the 49 counties with higher turnout rates contributed fewer than 10,000 votes each to the total number cast statewide.
Pulaski County, the state's most populous, was a major exception to the rule, contributing more than 128,000 to the total, or 15 percent of all votes cast statewide. Pulaski County had a 52.56 percent turnout.
You have to travel to the state's northwest corner to find voter numbers equaling Pulaski County's.
No other single county can touch Pulaski's total, but Benton and Washington counties together contributed more than 118,000 of the statewide vote, or almost 14 percent.
That means voters in just three urban counties -- Pulaski, Benton and Washington -- provided 29 percent of the statewide votes.
Expand the list to include other counties decidedly more urban than not and the combined votes surpass half the total votes cast statewide.
Even though turnout in most of them was under the 50 percent mark, just 11 counties make up the list. They include the big three plus Saline, Faulkner, Sebastian, Garland, Craighead, White, Jefferson and Lonoke counties, where totals varied from just under 20,000 votes to almost 40,000.
That's why campaigns are concentrated in the more populous counties. Even losing efforts in a given county can boost the statewide totals.
Election result reports are available online in map form as well as numbers of votes cast and the usual percentages. To access the information, go to the secretary of state's home page and click on the "election results" icon. You can access statewide results or results by county and all can be mapped, with counties or precincts displayed in red and blue in partisan races and in other colors for the issues.
Drill down in the different counties, even in Pulaski County, where more voters favored Democrats in the major races, and the precinct breakdown suggests even a reddening of parts of that county.
Look at Benton County's precinct breakdown in those major races and you'll see, for example, only one precinct out of 73 reported where the Democrat Mark Pryor prevailed in the Senate race. He won by only six votes in that one and only precinct he carried in Benton County. The rest of the county is painted red for Republican Tom Cotton.
Washington County looks much the same, with only Fayetteville precincts (and not all of them) shown to favor Pryor. The rest went for Cotton.
The actual vote tallies tell the story, too. Again, in Pulaski County, Pryor only led by less than 20,000 votes out of the more than 127,000 cast in the Senate race there.
That's not all.
While the Senate race is the easiest to compare, the sea of red ink is evident in all the major races statewide. Arkansas Republicans have something to celebrate. The state's Democrats will have to look hard to find anything in their long-term favor.
There is another set of numbers worth mentioning. These numbers come from the exit poll conducted as Arkansas voters left their polling places on Tuesday.
The Associated Press reported people age 45-64 represented the largest bloc of Arkansas voters, or 39 percent. Voters over 65 and those who are age 30-44 each accounted for 24 percent. The lowest turnout, at 12 percent, was among voters age 18-29.
While 83 percent were white, just 12 percent were black. A mere 2 percent were Hispanic.
More women, or 52 percent, than men, 48 percent, voted in Arkansas.
Here's the kicker: Within all these groups, except among black voters, more voters favored Cotton over Pryor.
Exit polls are not as concrete as actual results, but these do underscore the reddening of Arkansas.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Commentary on 11/12/2014