Reply #7: Arkansas in 2004: Did Bush Really Win?

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Arkansas in 2004: Did Bush Really Win?

by Max Standridge
January 24, 2005

Past Election Patterns, Pre-Election, Tracking and Exit Poll Patterns, Bill Clinton, Vote Discrepancies, Undervotes, and A "Convenient" Power Failure in Little Rock, All Combine to Suggest Otherwise

This report will be based on several categories of data, both historical and statistical in nature, which strongly suggest that John Kerry was making a showing in the American south in the 2004 election.

1. Past election patterns: A common myth the media have often deliberately or otherwise purveyed, has been that there is a "monolithic" South, in which all Southern states fall into a set pattern, with similar percentages of victory for Republicans versus non-Southerner Democratics. This pattern can be seriously challenged when one examines individual vote tallies in individual southern states, on a year-by-year basis. The most telling examples will be found in those election years in which the Republican supposedly "swept" the entire South, or virtually the entire South.

1972: Richard Nixon is supposedly re-elected as the first Republican President to carry the South. His vote patterns are described in the news media as representing a "realignment" of the entire South with conservative voting patterns. But serious problems begin to emerge when one examines certain Southern states, as to how votes are actually falling in various categories. For example, George Wallace's Alabama probably would not have been in Nixon's column, even had Wallace not been anywhere on the Democratic ticket, under normal circumstances. However, Wallace, at that time, was hospitalized in the wake of a shooting incident in a Florida mall while he'd been campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Then-Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern's taking Sen. Thomas Eagleton, D-MO, from his VP spot and replacing him with Sargent Shriver of Maryland had an impact on those two states, one of which is regarded as a "border" state (MO), while the other (MD) is regarded loosely as a "southern" state. While much was made of a Nixon "over two to one sweep" of votes throughout the South, it can be seen from the vote tallies in both Missouri and Maryland that Nixon's margins were far lower than 2-1 in those two states.

In addition, disaffection with the Republicans in the South is reflected in the fact that a Virginia Elector cast one vote for the Libertarian Presidential ticket of John Hospers and Theodora Nathan. This prevented Nixon from claiming all the South's Electoral votes.

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http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1119