Changes Since 1992: Arkansas

This is the first of what will be a semi-regular series over the next few weeks, detailing the changes in party power in certain states since the 1992 elections.

“I was born in a little town called Hope, Arkansas,” begins an ad for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. The ad, like much of the campaign, played up Clinton’s history as a working-class Southerner and popular governor. In the end, Clinton won Arkansas by over seventeen points in the 1992 election, and by 16.9% in 1996.

Two decades later, his wife would lose the state, where she had been First Lady for a combined twelve years, by over twenty-six points.

Arkansas’ swing from a Democratic stronghold to reliably Republican has been one of the most dramatic in the country over the past several decades, in either direction. The South as a whole has been trending toward the GOP since at least the 1960’s, but Arkansas is unique. It still saw reasonably close races at the presidential level through 2000, had a Democratic governor and two Democratic Senators as recently as 2010, and only gave Republicans narrow control of the state legislature in 2012, for the first time since Reconstruction.

Just look at the swing in presidential results in the state, from 1992 to 2016:

1992	1996	2000	2004	2008	2012	2016
Clinton +17.7	Clinton +16.9	Bush +5.4	Bush +9.7	McCain +19.1	Romney +23.7	Trump +26.6

But of the equation is of course the rapid shift of the South as a whole toward Republicans, a shift which has essentially been finalized during the Bush and Obama years. In that sense, Arkansas is a microcosm of the entire region.

But even compared to election results from neighboring states over the same time period, the rate of change in Arkansas is staggering. Bill Clinton won Kentucky by three points in 1992 and less than one in 1996; four years later, the state went for George W. Bush by double digits and never looked back. Clinton lost Mississippi to the Republican nominee in both 1992 and 1996; in 2000, Bush won by seventeen points there and the Republican margin of victory has stayed fairly constant ever since. But the GOP’s growth in Arkansas shows no sign of slowing down or stabilizing.

Clinton’s status as a “favorite son” in 1992 and 1996 certainly account for some of these noted shifts. But one would think that at least some of those benefits would rub off on his wife, perhaps causing her to lose by a smaller margin. Instead, she did several points worse than Barack Obama, himself wildly unpopular in the Natural State.

And the rapid shift toward Republicans is glaringly obvious in far more than just presidential contests. Below are three more sets of election results for the state, since 1992: U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and Governor. With all of them, the shifts are rapid and stunning.

Arkansas Senate Seat, Class 2:

1996	2002	2008	2014
Hutchinson +5.4	Pryor +7.8	Pryor +59.0	Cotton +17.0

Arkansas Senate Seat, Class 3:

1992	1998	2004	2010	2016
Bumpers +20.4	Lincoln +12.9	Lincoln +12.0	Boozman +21.1	Boozman +23.6

Party Composition of U.S. House Delegation, Arkansas:

1992	1994	1996	1998	2000	2002	2004
Split (2-2)	Split (2-2)	Split (2-2)	Split (2-2)	Democrats (3-1)	Democrats (3-1)	Democrats (3-1)

2006	2008	2010	2012	2014	2016
Democrats (3-1)	Democrats (3-1)	Republicans (3-1)	Republicans (4-0)	Republicans (4-0)	Republicans (4-0)

Arkansas Governor:

1994	1998	2002	2006	2010	2014
Tucker +19.2	Huckabee +21.1	Huckabee +7.0	Beebe +14.3	Beebe +30.9	Hutchinson +13.9

A special irony for Republicans to enjoy is the fact that Asa Hutchinson, the state’s current governor, is a former U.S. Representative who in 1998 was key in prosecuting the case for the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton—an Arkansas native and former governor. A microcosm of how dramatically the state has changed over the past twenty years.

I didn’t include full charts showing shifts in state attorney general and state legislature races, in the interest of space, but they tell the same story—an 88-11 margin in favor of Democrats in the state House following the 1992 elections, compared to a 73-27 Republican majority after the 2016 elections.

And, if the recent past is any indication, the best days for Arkansas Republicans may still be ahead.