The Traveler

Issue date: 10/24/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Larry Ash Jameka Jackson, a sophomore pre-nursing major, queries Arkansas residents on their political views from the Survey Research Center in Hotz Hall.

There are plenty of Democrats in Arkansas, but that's not helping Sen. Barack Obama all that much, according to the 2008 Arkansas Poll released yesterday morning.

The poll found that while more than a third of respondents identified themselves as Democrats compared to less than a fourth that identified themselves as Republicans, Sen. John McCain is leading Obama 51 percent to 36 percent. This is despite the 2007 Arkansas Poll predictions that indicated Arkansas residents would be leaning toward the Democratic Party in the 2008 elections.

Obama is receiving considerably less support from Democrats in the state than John Kerry did in 2004, with 67 percent of Democrats supporting Obama compared to 87 percent of Democrats supporting Kerry in 2004, said Janine Parry, director of the poll.

In addition, a majority of respondents agreed with Obama on issues such as removing troops from Iraq and meeting with leaders of countries considered U.S. enemies.

"There are many Democrats in Arkansas, and polls show that Arkansans agree with Obama on many issues, but there seems to be something that is keeping people from supporting him," said Pearl Ford, another researcher for the poll.

Many explanations are offered for this gap, one of which is race, Parry said.

When asked if they knew someone who would not vote for a black candidate, 34.2 percent of respondents said they did. The same question was asked nationally by the Pew Center, and 21 percent of respondents in that poll responded in the affirmative, Ford said.

Arkansas residents also tended to have more conservative attitudes on race. The poll showed that 58 percent of respondents disagreed that generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class. Forty-seven percent of respondents agreed that blacks could do as well as whites if they tried harder.

Poll results also indicated that a fifth of respondents think Obama is a Muslim, compared to 12.6 percent of people nationally who share the same belief. This is despite the fact that the poll found that most Arkansas voters were well-informed about politics, Ford said.

Continued...

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