The 2008 United States presidential election in Arkansas took place on November 4, 2008, and was part of the 2008 United States presidential election. State voters chose six representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
Arkansas was won by Republican John McCain by a 19.86% margin of victory, a much greater margin than George W. Bush attained in 2004, despite a large national Democratic trend. Prior to the election, all 17 news organizations considered this a state McCain would win, or otherwise a red state. The state trended dramatically Republican in 2008, as McCain received over 4% more of the statewide popular vote than Bush earned in 2004 and more than doubled his margin of victory. Only five counties swung more Democratic in 2008, and the vast majority of counties swung heavily Republican, some by as much as 30%. Of the ten counties with the largest percentage swing to the Republicans in the U.S. during this election, six of them were located in Arkansas.
Obama became the first Democrat to ever win the White House without carrying Arkansas since statehood in 1836. Since 1996, Arkansas has rapidly transformed from a Democratic stronghold into one of the most Republican states in the nation. It was also one of the six states where neither Obama nor McCain won during the primary season, and the strongest of five states that swung rightward in this election.
Despite McCain's landslide victory in the state's presidential race, Democratic Senator Mark Pryor easily won re-election in the senate election, in which he did not face Republican opposition, and Democrats won the popular vote and majority of House seats in the concurrent House election, in addition to majorities in both state legislative chambers. This was the first time Arkansas voted for a losing presidential candidate since 1968.
Primaries
- 2008 Arkansas Democratic presidential primary
- 2008 Arkansas Republican presidential primary
Campaign
Predictions
There were 16 news organizations who made state-by-state predictions of the election. Here are their last predictions before election day:
Polling
John McCain won every single opinion poll taken in Arkansas prior to the election, with leads ranging from 7% to 29%. However, he polled just in the low 50% range. RealClearPolitics gave the state an average of 52.3% for McCain, compared to 38.8% for Obama. The margin of victory on election day was more than double of the RCP average. The state was not seriously contested by either campaign.
Fundraising
Obama raised $1,004,783. McCain raised $934,884. Both candidates raised the most in Pulaski County.
Advertising and visits
Obama spent over $110,350. McCain spent only $459. Neither candidate visited the state.
Results
By county
- Bradley (largest city: Warren)
- Clark (largest city: Arkadelphia)
- Clay (largest city: Piggott)
- Hempstead (largest city: Hope)
- Jackson (largest city: Newport)
- Lawrence (largest city: Walnut Ridge)
- Lincoln (largest city: Star City)
- Little River (largest city: Ashdown)
- Mississippi (largest city: Osceola)
- Monroe (largest city: Clarendon)
- Poinsett (largest city: Harrisburg)
- Randolph (largest city: Pocahontas)
By congressional district
McCain won all four congressional district in Arkansas, three of which were held by Democrats.
Electors
Technically the voters of Arkansas cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. Arkansas is allocated six electors because it has four congressional districts and two senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of six electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and their running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all six electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than their candidate is known as a faithless elector.
The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 15, 2008, to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead, the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.
The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All six were pledged to John McCain and Sarah Palin:
- Jim Burnett
- Reta Hamilton
- Rose Bryant Jones
- Phyllis Kincannon
- Steve Lux
- Kermit Parks
Analysis
Although former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, easily carried his home state of Arkansas in 1992 and 1996, the state was largely considered a safe state for McCain. Early polls gave McCain a 9-point lead among possible voters on Election Day. Although the state was still strongly Democratic at the non-presidential levels, on Election Day, Arkansas voted for McCain by a margin of approximately 20% — ten points better than Bush's showing four years earlier. In this election, Arkansas voted 27.12% to the right of the nation at large.
A handful of counties swung safely into the GOP column. Jackson, Lincoln, and Clark counties voted Republican for the first time since in 1972. Bradley, Clay, Monroe, Poinsett, Randolph, and Little River counties did so for the first time since 1984, while Hempstead, Mississippi, and Lawrence counties did so for the first time since 1988. The Delta county of Jackson, for example, swung from a 14.3-point victory for Democrat Kerry in 2004 to a 16.3-point victory for McCain in 2008. Possible factors suggested for such a large swing away from the Democrats was Obama's status as the first African American major-party nominee in a historically segregationist state still dominated by conservative whites, as well as the fact that Hillary Clinton, who once served as First Lady of Arkansas while her husband was Governor, did not receive the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. Polling from the Spring showed Hillary Clinton defeating McCain in a hypothetical match-up in Arkansas. Obama became the first Democrat in history to win the White House without carrying Arkansas.
During the same election, however, freshman Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Pryor faced no Republican opposition, and was reelected in a landslide victory over Rebekah Kennedy of the Green Party. The four members of the state's delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives (three Democrats and one Republican) were also reelected with no major-party opposition. Republicans, however, picked up three seats in the Arkansas House of Representatives and one Democratic state representative became a Green (he later returned to the Democratic Party in 2009).