History
| Year | Republican | Democratic |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 58.72% 638,017 | 38.86% 422,310 |
| 2008 | 58.72% 638,017 | 38.86% 422,310 |
| 2004 | 54.31% 572,898 | 44.55% 469,953 |
| 2000 | 51.31% 472,940 | 45.86% 422,768 |
| 1996 | 36.80% 325,416 | 53.74% 475,171 |
| 1992 | 35.48% 337,324 | 53.21% 505,823 |
| 1988 | 56.37% 466,578 | 42.19% 349,237 |
| 1984 | 60.47% 534,774 | 38.29% 338,646 |
| 1980 | 48.13% 403,164 | 47.52% 398,041 |
| 1976 | 34.93% 268,753 | 64.94% 499,614 |
| 1972 | 68.82% 445,751 | 30.71% 198,899 |
| 1968* | 31.01% 189,062 | 30.33% 184,901 |
| 1964 | 43.41% 243,264 | 56.06% 314,197 |
| *State won by George Wallace of the American Independent Party, at 38.65%, or 235,627 votes |
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Arkansas had the distinction in 1992 of being the only state in the country to give the majority of its vote to a single candidate in the presidential election—native son Bill Clinton—while every other state's electoral votes were won by pluralities of the vote among the three candidates. Arkansas has become more reliably Republican in presidential elections in recent years. The state voted for John McCain in 2008 by a margin of 20 percentage points, making it one of the few states in the country to vote more Republican than it had in 2004. (The others were Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and West Virginia.) Obama's relatively poor showing in Arkansas was likely due to a lack of enthusiasm from state Democrats following former Arkansas First Lady Hillary Clinton's failure to win the nomination, and his relatively poor performance among rural white voters. However, the Democratic presence remains strong on the state level; in 2006, Democrats were elected to all statewide offices by the voters in a Democratic sweep that included the Democratic Party of Arkansas regaining the governorship.
Read more about this topic: Politics Of Arkansas
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“The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)