Demographics doom Clinton in Arkansas

Former President Bill Clinton lends support Wednesday as Hillary Clinton gives her concession speech in New York. “Nationally, Ms. Clinton didn’t do well with white working-class people, and Arkansas is filled with white working-class people,” Arkansas Democratic Party spokesman H.L. Moody said.
Former President Bill Clinton lends support Wednesday as Hillary Clinton gives her concession speech in New York. “Nationally, Ms. Clinton didn’t do well with white working-class people, and Arkansas is filled with white working-class people,” Arkansas Democratic Party spokesman H.L. Moody said.

Despite her last name and her long ties to the state, White House hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton found few allies in Arkansas on Tuesday.

Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, won in eight of the state's 75 counties, capturing just 33.7 percent of the vote.

She was doomed, supporters and opponents say, by the state's demographics.

"Nationally, Ms. Clinton didn't do well with white working-class people, and Arkansas is filled with white working-class people, so we echoed a national trend," state Democratic Party spokesman H.L. Moody said. "This isn't something that's unique to Arkansas."

Republican President-elect Donald Trump was supported by 58 percent of whites, according to exit polls. Arkansas is whiter than the nation as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

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He led 67 percent to 28 percent among whites without college degrees. Arkansas ranks near the bottom when it comes to college degree attainment, according to census and U.S. Department of Education figures.

He captured 62 percent of the rural vote. Only 56.2 percent of Arkansans live in urban areas; nationally the figure is 80.7 percent.

The New York billionaire received 61 percent of the vote among those with military service; the percentage of Arkansans who are veterans exceeds the national average.

He also secured 81 percent of the white evangelical vote. Forty-six percent of Arkansans are evangelicals, according to the Pew Research Center; nearly double the national rate of 25.4 percent.

The state's median age also has been slightly above the national average in recent years. Trump fared best among older voters.

"Put all those together, and you have a recipe for Trump voters," said Ouachita Baptist University political science professor Hal Bass.

Clinton fared best among city dwellers in Arkansas and nationwide. (She easily carried Little Rock, the state's largest city, among others.)

She also drew strong support from blacks in Arkansas and nationwide. Of the eight Arkansas counties that she carried, six have black majorities.

A seventh, Desha County, is 48 percent black.

But turnout in those predominantly black counties was down, failing to match President Barack Obama's showing in 2008 and 2012.

The lower support wasn't limited to those communities, however. She trailed Obama's 2012 vote totals in all but seven counties, according to elections data from the secretary of state's office. She topped his 2008 vote count in just four; two in Northwest Arkansas and two in central Arkansas.

Goodwill toward her husband, former President Bill Clinton, did not translate into higher votes.

She lost in Hempstead County, where her husband was born, and fell short in Garland County, where he grew up. Hillary Clinton even met defeat in Washington County, where she briefly lived, taught law and got married.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Arkansas’ county-by-county presidential election results

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Map showing Arkansas Counties where Democratic votes increased

Hope Mayor Dennis Ramsey, an independent, said he wasn't surprised to see his county embrace Trump.

"It's just a sign of the times. What precipitated it? That's beyond my pay grade," he said. "Hempstead's just like the rest of Arkansas. Arkansas is a red state, and Hempstead is a red county."

Democratic presidential nominees have been losing in Arkansas, most of the time, for the past half-century.

But the contests haven't usually been this lopsided.

Democrat Walter Mondale of Minnesota got a higher share of the Arkansas vote when he ran. So did Mike Dukakis of Massachusetts, Al Gore of Tennessee and John Kerry of Massachusetts.

U.S. Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota fared slightly worse in 1972, but his campaign was a nightmare. By the time he accepted his party's nomination at nearly 3 a.m. Eastern time, the nation had already gone to bed. The country was wide awake days later, however, when news broke that his vice presidential pick had previously received shock therapy to treat depression. McGovern dumped his running mate, and on Election Day his campaign imploded.

Democratic Party leaders in Arkansas were counting on Clinton, an Illinois native, to fare better than her predecessor, Obama. Instead, she fell short.

"Despite her Arkansas connections, she actually underperformed" compared with northern Democrats, Bass said.

Jay Barth, a Hendrix College political science professor, said a lot of Democrats assumed that their recent decline in numbers were "just an Obama problem."

"I think a lot of Arkansas Democrats really thought that she would really help bring some folks home," he said.

"That certainly didn't happen."

Folks in small-town Arkansas possibly found it hard to identify with Clinton in 2016, Barth said.

"She has really moved from being somebody who is part of middle America to someone who is kind of part of the coastal elite. ... That's exactly what doesn't work, especially in rural Arkansas."

Republican Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin said Clinton cut most of her ties with the Natural State when she moved with her husband to the White House in 1993. In 2000, she opted to run for the U.S. Senate in New York.

"She chose not to live here. She chose not to run here. She chose not to spend much time here, and she chose not to really campaign here," Griffin said.

"You had a choice between a Republican from New York who wants to boldly change Washington and a liberal from New York who represents the status quo. ... I mean, that's a no-brainer."

But Bass, the Ouachita Baptist professor, had a simpler explanation. "I think the 'D' next to her name was a killer in terms of her electoral prospects," he said.

Bass and others say Clinton never developed the kind of bonds with Arkansas that her husband had.

"She was admired and respected, but never really beloved," he said. "She was always looked at with a little bit of, I guess, suspicion going back to the gubernatorial terms of her husband."

Jerry Cox, president of the Arkansas Family Council, said Clinton was likely hampered, in part, by her positions on social issues.

Bill Clinton was better tuned to public sentiment when he was in Arkansas, he said.

"He didn't lead the parade for abortion. He didn't lead the parade for gay marriage. ... He wasn't out there championing those things," said Cox, a frequent Bill Clinton critic.

As governor, Bill Clinton made sure not to burn bridges with Christian conservatives, singing in a Southern Baptist choir and even speaking at a 1980 rally on the Capitol steps organized by Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell.

He also knew how to pour on the charm, Cox said. Hillary Clinton doesn't have the same gift for retail politics, he added.

"Whether you agree with him or not, I think most people would give him high marks for being a likeable person, and when you're likeable, you can win elections."

Since Clinton's Tuesday defeat, pundits and party activists have second-guessed key campaign decisions, but a friend of the Democratic nominee isn't casting blame.

Sheila Bronfman, who organized a group of Clinton campaign volunteers known as the Arkansas Travelers, said the nominee and her supporters can't be faulted for the election outcome in Arkansas or nationwide.

The dozens of Arkansans who campaigned for Clinton in battleground states are "the most incredible team and group of people that I've ever been associated with," Bronfman said. "They gave their all, and they didn't leave anything on the field, so everyone can be proud ... of the work they did."

Part of the reason the group traveled to New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere was so they could join the battle in areas that were fiercely contested and winnable.

"Arkansas was just never in play," she said. "It's a different state and a different atmosphere" than when the Clintons left for Washington.

Janine Parry, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said the state's Democrats should brace themselves for more unhappy election nights.

"Arkansas is thoroughly in the Republican column for the foreseeable future," she said. "The prospects still look pretty bleak."

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