In the Primaries Leading up to the 2008 Electioins two camps were embroiled in a bitter run-off; Hillary Clinton with her newly made Conservative Democrat image, and Obama with a Transitive Moderate one.
Historically, Arkansas is a Democratic state, and there the Democrats form the core of the Blue Dog group. Back when Hillary Clinton was asumed the Democratic Presidential Nominee, the state polls gave an advantage of over 30 points to the Democrats.
In 2000 and 2004 Bush just barely took the state by a couple of points.
Tuesday McCain beat Obama in Arkansas by just under 20 points.
Immedietly afterwards I poured over the trends of the election, and realized a crazy fact. Out of the 22% of the counties in the nation that voted for Republicans more this year than in 2004, %13 were in Arkansas...
This chart displays the counties in Arkansas based on how they voted in comparison with 2004. As you can see the majority of Arkansas voted MORE Republican this year than the past.
Furthermore we can break down this information based on the regions where this trended.
Region A - A strong Republican Stronghold, home of the Religious Right. Some Liberals on the Campus of the University of Arkansas.
Region B - A amalgation of racists, liberal artists, LGBT organizations, hippies, and general crazy people. 6 of the states 13 hate groups are headquartered here.
Region C - The Democratic stronghold of the state.
Region C1 - The most liberal area of the state.
Region D - The most conservative area of the state but it leans to Democratic Conservatives.
Region E - The major center of African American population.
Region F - The second major Republican Stronghold. Location of the Hometown of Both Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee. Very split, always conservative.
As we can see in this chart, the Counties where most of the Republicans in the state reside, are the ones that tended to vote more for Obama. Meanwhile the Democratic strongholds, (except for Little Rock) all went for McCain. And they all did this by over 20 points more than in 2004.
Looking at some of the Exit Polls provided by CNN covering the area of Arkansas, I found a worrying trend amongst them.
The number of Arkansans who said race played a factor in there vote was over 40%. Furthermore, assuming that only half of the people who actually voted based on race answered this correctly, it would not be a stretch to say that the real numbers are over 60% of Arkansans voting based on Race.
Arkansas has a average African American population of just over 20%.
Assuming we say ALL African Americans were voting for Obama because he was Black, we are still left with 60% of the White population voting based on race.
Considering McCain won by over 20 points in the state, its not a stretch to say that at least half of those White Votes were based on not voting for Obama because he is black.
That means, in Arkansas, by a conservative estimate, %30 of the White Population voted for McCain simply because Obama was black.
That, my friends, as John McCain would say: is unnaceptable.