Yesterday’s final River Market series lecture featuring Arkansas Poll director Janine Parry received plenty of covered from the local media. A political science professor at the University of Arkansas, Parry analyzed the results of Tuesday’s elections in Arkansas.
She specifically discussed the strength of the Republican Party, which gained a number of seats in the state legislature in addition to winning, a U.S. Senate seat, three Congressional races and three statewide constitutional offices.
ArkansasNews.com quoted Parry’s lecture in a story about the Republican gains:
Political observers mused today on whether Tuesday’s election had ended Arkansas’ status as a Democratic holdout among Southern states.
“That’s the big question here, right? Is this election the one?” said Janine Parry, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas, in a noon talk in Little Rock sponsored by the Clinton School of Public Service.
“There have been many elections that have been (called) ‘the one’ over time,” Parry said. “I think this one shows a lot stronger potential for actually fitting that bill, but I’d like to see a few more election cycles to come, as would many of you, to determine that.”
Signs that the GOP’s gains could be lasting, Parry said, include a boost in the number of candidates filing for office — in 2006 no Republicans filed for any Democrat-controlled Arkansas congressional seat — and population growth in the Republican stronghold of Northwest Arkansas.
That growth has occurred while population levels have declined in the southern and eastern parts of the state, where Democrats have tended to dominate, said Parry, who directs UA’s annual Arkansas Poll. She also said research shows Northwest Arkansas residents are more likely to turn out to vote than other Arkansans.