The Arkansas Secretary of State’s web page has election returns for the May 22 primary here. In the Republican presidential primary, Mitt Romney has 71.0% of the vote against several opponents. In the Democratic primary, the results as of 9:10 p.m. central time are: President Obama 58.7%, John Wolfe 41.3%.
Arkansas has an open primary.
Appears the all-but-certain nominees of both major parties are having a hard time getting the members of their respective parties to like them.
WOLFEMENTUM!
And on the GOP side none of this matters because the straw poll doesn’t matter the delegates do. The real battle is at the state convention.
Wolfe carried 36 counties. He did particularly well in smaller counties where an overwhelming share of the population voted in the Democratic Primary.
Ashley 2860:329, Bradley 1187:262, Calhoun 1173:103; Clay 2257:110; Cleveland 1165:417; Craighead 6556:2358.
Arkansas doesn’t have party registration – so if you live in an area which has a Democratic Primary, for senator or representative, you take a Democratic ballot if you want to vote. You don’t choose a ballot because you want to have a meaningless vote in a primary. And there may be resentment in Arkansas how Hillary Clinton was treated in the 2008 primaries.
It is not a good sign for an incumbent president, who according to the media has already secured his renomination, to lose so many counties in his own primary to a political unknown, or to “uncommitted” (as in Kentucky). Even if these results are in states Mr. Obama probably has no chance of winning anyway, this could lead to high numbers of Democrats in those states to either abstain from voting, or crossing over to the other side.
Having over 40% of Democrats crossing over to the other side will make for an embarrasing defeat for Obama in those states where that happens; abstention by those Democrats would add disaster for other Democrats accross the board.