1928 United States presidential election in Arkansas

The 1928 United States presidential election in Arkansas was held on November 6, 1928, as part of the 1928 United States presidential election. State voters chose nine electors, or representatives to the United States Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice-president.

Except for the Unionist Ozark counties of Newton and Searcy where Republicans controlled local government, Arkansas since the end of Reconstruction had been a classic one-party Democratic “Solid South” state.See Disfranchisement of effectively all African Americans and most poor whites had meant that outside those two aberrant counties, the Republican Party was completely moribund and Democratic primaries the only competitive elections. As in other areas in and around the Ozarks, a strong Socialist Party movement did develop in the 1900s, but it nowhere was threatening to Democratic hegemony and intimidation largely eliminated its influence from the mid-1910s.

The 1920s did see a minor change in this, as increased voting by poor Ozark whites as a protest against Woodrow Wilson's internationalist foreign policy meant that Warren G. Harding was able to win almost forty percent of the statewide vote in 1920; however despite his national landslide Calvin Coolidge in 1924 could not do any more than win the two traditional Unionist GOP counties.

With all other prominent Democrats sitting the election out, the party nominated Alfred E. Smith, four-term Governor of New York as its nominee for 1928, with little opposition. Arkansas lies in the core of the Ozark “Bible Belt” and would have been expected to stand extremely vulnerable to anti-Catholic and pro-Prohibition voting – its public support for prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools showed Arkansas in the vanguard of fundamentalist Protestantism. Elsewhere in the White South, extreme fear ensued because the region had no experience of the Southern and Eastern European Catholic immigrants who were Smith's local constituency. Southern fundamentalist Protestants believed that Smith would allow papal and priestly leadership in the United States, which Protestantism was a reaction against. The Southern Baptist Convention said that

Campaign During July, the flagging Ku Klux Klan opposed Smith because of his stance against Prohibition, a reform Robinson supported without being dogmatic.However, Robinson’s support of religious liberty was able to ameliorate opposition from Protestant ministers – whom Robinson felt was working for the Republican Party – to a greater extent than other Southern states except for wholly Deep South Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, especially as Brough warned many people that Republican inroads would threaten white supremacy because white girls had worked with Negroes in Hoover’s Department of Commerce.

In counties along the Arkansas River, Smith may have also been helped by the perception that Hoover was ineffective at relieving the disastrous flooding of the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers a year and a half beforehand.

Results

Results by county +1928 United States presidential election in Arkansas by countyCounty Alfred Emmanuel Smith Democratic Herbert Clark HooverRepublican Various candidatesOther parties Margin Total votes cast # % # % # % # % Arkansas 1,491 58.59% 1,046 41.10% 8 0.31% 445 17.49% 2,545 Ashley 1,393 63.84% 786 36.02% 3 0.14% 607 27.82% 2,182 Baxter 665 56.31% 504 42.68% 12 1.02% 161 13.63% 1,181 Benton 2,348 41.42% 3,248 57.29% 73 1.29% -900 -15.87% 5,669 Boone 1,708 52.30% 1,545 47.31% 13 0.40% 163 4.99% 3,266 Bradley 1,487 76.89% 447 23.11% 0 0.00% 1,040 53.77% 1,934 Calhoun 765 74.06% 262 25.36% 6 0.58% 503 48.69% 1,033 Carroll 1,540 46.50% 1,757 53.05% 15 0.45% -217 -6.55% 3,312 Chicot 1,021 69.55% 445 30.31% 2 0.14% 576 39.24% 1,468 Clark 1,817 66.41% 913 33.37% 6 0.22% 904 33.04% 2,736 Clay 1,435 52.99% 1,254 46.31% 19 0.70% 181 6.68% 2,708 Cleburne 856 59.36% 574 39.81% 12 0.83% 282 19.56% 1,442 Cleveland 692 59.15% 477 40.77% 1 0.09% 215 18.38% 1,170 Columbia 1,753 73.90% 617 26.01% 2 0.08% 1,136 47.89% 2,372 Conway 1,514 69.48% 665 30.52% 0 0.00% 849 38.96% 2,179 Craighead 2,132 51.77% 1,958 47.55% 28 0.68% 174 4.23% 4,118 Crawford 1,743 52.79% 1,559 47.21% 0 0.00% 184 5.57% 3,302 Crittenden 1,635 84.32% 304 15.68% 0 0.00% 1,331 68.64% 1,939 Cross 1,282 79.63% 324 20.12% 4 0.25% 958 59.50% 1,610 Dallas 1,030 67.01% 503 32.73% 4 0.26% 527 34.29% 1,537 Desha 1,082 76.47% 331 23.39% 2 0.14% 751 53.07% 1,415 Drew 1,452 74.20% 500 25.55% 5 0.26% 952 48.65% 1,957 Faulkner 2,659 72.57% 992 27.07% 13 0.35% 1,667 45.50% 3,664 Franklin 1,329 62.72% 774 36.53% 16 0.76% 555 26.19% 2,119 Fulton 934 57.58% 686 42.29% 2 0.12% 248 15.29% 1,622 Garland 2,823 50.79% 2,720 48.94% 15 0.27% 103 1.85% 5,558 Grant 1,045 70.28% 439 29.52% 3 0.20% 606 40.75% 1,487 Greene 1,426 58.20% 1,011 41.27% 13 0.53% 415 16.94% 2,450 Hempstead 2,038 69.58% 886 30.25% 5 0.17% 1,152 39.33% 2,929 Hot Spring 999 46.90% 1,126 52.86% 5 0.23% -127 -5.96% 2,130 Howard 1,055 57.74% 763 41.76% 9 0.49% 292 15.98% 1,827 Independence 1,511 56.63% 1,150 43.10% 7 0.26% 361 13.53% 2,668 Izard 902 56.30% 696 43.45% 4 0.25% 206 12.86% 1,602 Jackson 1,527 68.35% 698 31.24% 9 0.40% 829 37.11% 2,234 Jefferson 2,611 58.67% 1,830 41.12% 9 0.20% 781 17.55% 4,450 Johnson 1,292 62.30% 766 36.93% 16 0.77% 526 25.36% 2,074 Lafayette 991 69.45% 435 30.48% 1 0.07% 556 38.96% 1,427 Lawrence 1,204 60.72% 774 39.03% 5 0.25% 430 21.68% 1,983 Lee 1,046 87.53% 149 12.47% 0 0.00% 897 75.06% 1,195 Lincoln 869 85.11% 151 14.79% 1 0.10% 718 70.32% 1,021 Little River 916 66.62% 457 33.24% 2 0.15% 459 33.38% 1,375 Logan 1,967 57.31% 1,455 42.40% 10 0.29% 512 14.92% 3,432 Lonoke 1,857 73.23% 676 26.66% 3 0.12% 1,181 46.57% 2,536 Madison 1,717 38.16% 2,760 61.33% 23 0.51% -1,043 -23.18% 4,500 Marion 731 62.27% 436 37.14% 7 0.60% 295 25.13% 1,174 Miller 1,752 60.16% 1,150 39.49% 10 0.34% 602 20.67% 2,912 Mississippi 4,451 76.75% 1,324 22.83% 24 0.41% 3,127 53.92% 5,799 Monroe 851 67.38% 411 32.54% 1 0.08% 440 34.84% 1,263 Montgomery 726 42.33% 976 56.91% 13 0.76% -250 -14.58% 1,715 Nevada 1,242 56.66% 946 43.16% 4 0.18% 296 13.50% 2,192 Newton 533 28.63% 1,316 70.68% 13 0.70% -783 -42.05% 1,862 Ouachita 1,582 60.08% 1,051 39.92% 0 0.00% 531 20.17% 2,633 Perry 636 57.25% 472 42.48% 3 0.27% 164 14.76% 1,111 Phillips 2,061 80.76% 487 19.08% 4 0.16% 1,574 61.68% 2,552 Pike 779 52.56% 697 47.03% 6 0.40% 82 5.53% 1,482 Poinsett 2,324 66.06% 1,182 33.60% 12 0.34% 1,142 32.46% 3,518 Polk 870 45.41% 1,022 53.34% 24 1.25% -152 -7.93% 1,916 Pope 2,735 63.38% 1,557 36.08% 23 0.53% 1,178 27.30% 4,315 Prairie 1,000 61.69% 613 37.82% 8 0.49% 387 23.87% 1,621 Pulaski 9,215 65.24% 4,881 34.56% 29 0.21% 4,334 30.68% 14,125 Randolph 1,527 66.08% 776 33.58% 8 0.35% 751 32.50% 2,311 St. Francis 1,376 68.73% 617 30.82% 9 0.45% 759 37.91% 2,002 Saline 1,268 70.72% 520 29.00% 5 0.28% 748 41.72% 1,793 Scott 891 60.41% 573 38.85% 11 0.75% 318 21.56% 1,475 Searcy 606 29.62% 1,425 69.65% 15 0.73% -819 -40.03% 2,046 Sebastian 3,187 47.65% 3,467 51.84% 34 0.51% -280 -4.19% 6,688 Sevier 1,259 70.61% 524 29.39% 0 0.00% 735 41.22% 1,783 Sharp 808 61.68% 501 38.24% 1 0.08% 307 23.44% 1,310 Stone 628 54.90% 499 43.62% 17 1.49% 129 11.28% 1,144 Union 3,128 65.88% 1,612 33.95% 8 0.17% 1,516 31.93% 4,748 Van Buren 1,539 60.66% 994 39.18% 4 0.16% 545 21.48% 2,537 Washington 2,395 43.02% 3,132 56.26% 40 0.72% -737 -13.24% 5,567 White 2,299 53.73% 1,957 45.73% 23 0.54% 342 7.99% 4,279 Woodruff 1,163 71.92% 452 27.95% 2 0.12% 711 43.97% 1,617 Yell 2,086 71.91% 802 27.65% 13 0.45% 1,284 44.26% 2,901Totals123,14061.06%77,78938.57%7570.38%45,35122.49%201,686

Analysis In other Outer South states and in Alabama, powerful local Democrats refused to support Smith. However, in Arkansas, the two leading politicians in the state, Charles Hillman Brough and Joseph Taylor Robinson, had supported the New York Governor for more than a year before his nomination had become official. Robinson was the first major party Vice-Presidential nominee from a former Confederate state since Andrew Johnson in 1864, and was a moderate who had refrained from supporting either Smith or his rival William Gibbs McAdoo during the disastrous 1924 Democratic National Convention. The fact that Robinson denounced Thomas Heflin’s claim that some American Senators (including Heflin himself) were being paid or bribed by the (anti-Catholic) Mexican Government and quarrelled with the Alabama Senator violently over whether religion could be a qualification for office further linked him to Smith even before becoming his running mate.

Senator Robinson's uniquely successful appeals ensured that overwhelmingly white counties in Arkansas remained at least relatively loyal to Smith, although Hoover did win eight counties that went for John W. Davis in 1924. On the whole, Arkansas’ voting was erratic outside of the black-belt counties where the white minority that did vote remained overwhelmingly loyal to Smith. Hoover was the first ever Republican victor in Carroll County, Hot Spring County and Polk County, whilst he was the first Republican since Ulysses S. Grant to carry Sebastian County and Washington County.

See also United States presidential elections in Arkansas

References