PEA RIDGE — The presidential election is over and apparently half of America’s population is happy and the other half wondering where they went wrong. So, this must go into the election trivia category since it has no meaningful impact on our voting at this point. This may be of interest, however, to people who like statistics.
Just for the record, you can check the results of my curiosity survey by going to www.politico.com/2012-election/ map/#/President/2012/. It is important to note two points about information in this article - the state-by-state tallies were not complete when I gathered this information and the numbers they provided were generally rounded to simplify my reporting.
Because Arkansas was not a “swing state” (also called battleground state) or one in question as to who it would support, my interest prompted a number of questions about our relationship to other states and the nation as a whole. Remember our little state has six electoral votes all going to Romney because he got 60.5 percent of Arkansas’ slightly over one million votes. President Obama got 36.9 percent and the other three candidates got a combined 2.6 percent.
If the electoral votes were based on popular vote, Romney would have gotten 3.6 votes, President Obama 2.4 votes and the other three candidates zero. If they were “whole votes,” no fractions, it would have been 4 for Romney 2 for Obama.
The information in the preceding paragraph needs to be compared to other states to be of real value, but using the information from the popular vote and the electoral votes Obama received 51.4 percent of the popular vote nationallybut the electoral votes gave him a 61.7 percent margin with 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206 (38.3 percent).
Romney had 48.6 percent of the popular vote which was near 122 million. Based on popular vote, President Obama did not get the much desired and often mentioned “mandate.”
Another interesting trivia point showed that of Arkansas’ 75 counties, only nine gave President Obama a majority of their votes. Pulaski County, with approximately 159,000 votes, gave President Obama a 54.7 percent edge.
The other candidates got 2 percent and Romney 43.3 percent.
The most Democratic County appears to be Phillips County because they gave Obama a 65.6 percent victory, Romney gathering 32.8 percent and the other three a total of 1.6 percent.
This had little impact on the overall state outcome because Phillips County shows about 3,400 votes counted.
Woodruff County had some interesting results. They gave Obama a “victory” with 49.9 percent and Romney 45.7 percent but gave an astounding 4.4 percent to the combined other three candidates. This was with a countywide total of approximately 2,600 votes.
Johnson (L) got 2.3 percent of those votes which appears to be a county high percentage.
The other Arkansas counties that gave a majority to President Obama were Jefferson, Crittenden, St. Francis, Lee, Desha and Chicot. The string of counties along the Mississippi River are prominent in this list.
Two counties produced some interesting results base on my research of this website data. Arkansas’ Boone County appears to be the most Republican county with 72.5 percent supporting Romney. Mississippi County appears to be the closest with Romney getting 49.4 percent, Obama 48.3 percent and the others 2.4 percent.
Sorry if I am offending any of the supporters of the three candidates from the other parties, but not all the results could fit into this article.
Of the states that surround Arkansas, there was some interesting (and encouraging to many) news for Republicans.
Every county in Oklahoma was red (Republican)
Missouri had three blue counties - Jackson (Independence and south Kansas City), St. Louis (city of St. Louis) and Boone (Columbia - University of Missouri). Missouri was a red state - all electoral votes went to Romney.
Kansas had only two blue counties with the rest voting for Romney.
Tennessee had four blue counties with the balance red.
Louisiana had 10 blue counties or parishes that were mixed with mostly red counties. Interesting thing visible on the state map, the three counties in the northeast corner of Louisiana, along the Mississippi River, continue the blue strip with Arkansas.
Texas was primarily red with some major cities blue and the counties along the Mexican border primarily blue, but the state was 57.2 percent for Romney.
Other states that were interesting include:
◊Massachusetts (Romney’s home state and the state he governed) gave 60.8 percent of their 3.5 million votes and 11 electoral votes to Obama.
◊ California, with approximately 10.7 million votes, gave Obama a 59.3 percent to 38.3 percent victory even though approximately one half of the area shown was red. The red just wasn’t the population centers.
◊Wisconsin, which recently went through the recall election of the Republican governor, which he won with a greater margin of victory than he had when he got elected, went Democratic in the presidential election even though the state legislature is now controlled by the Republican Party. With approximately 3.1 million votes, they supported Obama 52.8 percent to 46.1 percent. The map showed about half the counties red, but the primary population centers (Milwaukee and Madison) were Obama’s strong vote centers.
The Carl Roves and other high-priced political experts, who must have been paid extremely well for their television appearances, can now write books and make personal appearances to support themselves until the next election.
Please pray for our nation, our president and legislators, that they might have wisdom as we step gently into the next four years.
We won’t know if the term “fiscal cliff” is actually a “fiscal slope” until we get there, but someone has got to support the entitlement programs that seemed to be a factor in the outcome of the election.
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Editor’s note: Leo Lynch is an award-winning columnist. He is a native of Benton County has deep roots in northwest Arkansas. He is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace. He can be contacted at prtnews@ nwaonline.com.
News, Pages 4 on 11/21/2012