…the more they stay the same.
Ever since the Arkansas runoff last Tuesday, I’d been trying to do a post-mortem on why Bill Halter, who seemingly had the momentum, lost by a similar margin as he did the first round.
Whether it was a turnout effect, the effect of D.C. Morrison voters, things just didn’t seem to change all that much. Halter won 48.8% of the vote head-to-head against Lincoln in the first round; this dropped slightly to 48.0% in the runoff.
Garland County was the site of some voting controversy (having moved from 42 to 2 voting stations) for a county of more than 80,000. (That’s like having 70 voting stations for all of Chicago instead of the 2,700+ we actually have!) Notably, that shifted from a significant Halter advantage to a slight Lincoln advantage. Did that make the difference? Probably not – Halter still lost by a healthy 10,000 votes. Bill and Blanche traded a few counties (Halter picked up 6, Lincoln picked up 7), but things pretty much remained in a holding pattern.
I couldn’t seem to find too much else to write about, so I’ll just throw up some maps for fun.
Here’s a comparison of Halter’s and Lincoln’s raw vote margins, Halter in green and Lincoln in orange; runoff on left, first round on right.
And pie charts of the vote by each county, again, runoff on top, first round on bottom. Morrison is added in purple.
the knowledge I gleamed on election night, the only way Halter would of been able to pull this out was lose Pulaski county by single digits instead of the drumming he took there. Lincoln was able to take the fight out to Halter’s base with the help of Bubba while having Obama lock down the black vote in Little Rock.
It’s the South, we don’t like outsiders coming in. Yes, Lincoln had support of outside interests, but labor, the liberal blogosphere, and the media literally had Halter as the labor candidate.
If it had been a low key race, I believe Halter might of won, or at least made it much closer.
Lincoln had the establishment support, and made Halter look like an outsider even though he’s the Lt. Governor.
Lincoln actually improved on her performance in Little Rock. Could that have been the Clinton bump? If anything, I’d be as willing to believe that the Big Dog campaigning for her actually paid dividends in a way that big endorsements usually don’t – she seems to have picked up exactly as many voters in Little Rock who went for Morrison in Round 1, while Morrison voters everywhere else seem to have broken about 60-40 for Lincoln. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but the graphics do raise the question.
Lincoln’s coalition is made of blacks and the Ozarks.
Halter’s coalition is old-school white Democrats.
It seems that way from the last two images.
candidate.
Did Halter do any serious outreach to the African American community?
(OTOH, African Americans in AL apparently voted for the more liberal candidate for Gov, even though it was a white man against one of their own.)
wonder if having Elliot will drive out AA turnout in Pulaski county, helping Lincoln. I know everyone calls her unelectable but that has to be a plus.