Why did Arkansas swing Republican that much?

[President Johnson]

Arkansas voted more Republican with every election after Bill Clinton's easy win in 1996, but it went much further to the right in 2008 compared to 2004, even though Obama obviously did much better than Kerry in almost every other region that a few other southern states and Appalachia. Was that truly based off racism? I get that the South became more Republican over the years, but this is especially interesting as 2008 was a semi-landslide for the Democrats nationally while 2004 was a defeat.

The result also makes me question whether Hillary would actually have won the state as polls suggested earlier in 2008 and 2007, before she dropped out of the race. I think she would have done better than Obama, but not by so much. Maybe similar to Kerry 2004 or Gore 2000 at very best.

[TML]

I don't think Obama's race was a primary factor; the more salient factors were nationalization of formerly local politics, combined with Obama and other prominent national Democratic figures being seen as urban elites as compared to AR's mostly rural nature.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

I don’t think it was explicitly Obama’s race, but I do wonder if his race became something of a symbol associated with more progressive cultural politics that turned off people in places like Arkansas, West Virginia, etc.

Hillary as the ‘08 nominee never would have won in those places, but the swing towards the GOP probably wouldn’t have been anything like what it actually was under Obama.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I think a lot of it is that Bill Clinton basically extended the life of the Arkansas Democratic Party another 15-20 years . Even from 2001-2007 , Bill Clinton was what normies really associated the Democratic Party with so that benefited the democrats in Arkansas .

Sorta of like how in 2018 , Normies most associated the Democratic Party with Obama , the same was true in 2002/2006 with Bill Clinton .

[HAnnA MArin County]

PUMAs .

IIRC, Arkansas had the highest amount of disaffected Hillary voters who voted for John McCain.

[Sumner 1868]

It was about race, nothing more, nothing less. I would agree that Clinton as President boosted the Democratic baseline a bit, but if you don't mind the "Massachusetts liberal" John Kerry yet Barack Obama was unacceptable in  a GOP near-meltdown...