Super Tuesday: Trump, Biden win primaries in Arkansas

Former President Donald Trump cruised to victory in the Republican primary in Arkansas on Tuesday as he marches toward securing the GOP nomination. President Joe Biden easily won the Democratic primary.

The Associated Press called both races shortly after 8 p.m. The polls closed at 7:30 p.m.

Trump and Biden carried all of Arkansas’ 40 Republican and 31 Democratic delegates, who will go to their parties’ conventions this summer and vote to nominate the winner of their state’s primary.

Live election results: The latest election results from across Arkansas

While both party’s primary races were widely expected to go this way, the contest between Trump and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was seen as more competitive than the Democratic race.

Going into Super Tuesday, Haley had a single primary victory in Washington, D.C. On Super Tuesday, she also won Vermont.

The Republican nominee must win 1,215 out of 2,429 total delegates nationwide to win the nomination. On Super Tuesday 854 of those were at stake.

Live updates: What to know about presidential primary, local races for Super Tuesday in Arkansas

A Democratic candidate needs 1,968 out of a total of 3,934 delegates to win the nomination. On Super Tuesday, 1,420 of these were at stake.

Nikki Haley announced she was suspending her 2024 presidential campaign Wednesday morning, after suffering disappointing losses across the country on Super Tuesday.

For Haley, losing Arkansas’ 40 Republican delegates wasn’t a campaign killer by itself. But anything less than a stellar Super Tuesday performance nationwide means a very narrow path to victory going forward — if any at all.

Arkansas is a deep-red state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since going blue for its own former governor, Bill Clinton, in 1996.

Every branch of its state government is controlled by conservatives and its entire congressional delegation is made up of Republicans. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a former member of Trump’s White House staff.

It’s highly unlikely to go blue again in 2024.

Arkansas holds open primaries, however, meaning any voter can cast a ballot in any party’s primary, regardless of their past party affiliation.

With Haley now backing away from a pledge to endorse the winner of the Republican primaries, the margin between her and Trump in Arkansas could still have important implications for the general elections in November.

Smooth voting but low turnout across Arkansas

There were no major problems with voting statewide, said Chris Powell, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Secretary of State. A mishap in Pulaski County involving the delivery of blank ballots to the wrong polling place was resolved in about 40 minutes of the polls opening, according to officials there.

Turnout, though, remained extremely low across many Arkansas counties. “It’s kind of sad how low it is,” said election coordinator Meghan Hassler of Sebastian County.

In Woodruff County, the second smallest in the state by population, Dirk Zwart, an official at the Board of Elections, said that heavy rain in the morning had kept turnout low at first. By 11 a.m. they had reached around 5% turnout. Zwart said they didn’t expect to see more than 20% by the end of the night.

As of Tuesday afternoon, only around 16,000 ballots had been cast in Pulaski County, the largest in the state, compared to the nearly 50,000 total in 2020. Amanda Dickens, Pulaski County election coordinator, said that she didn’t expect to reach half of that this year.

“I don’t know if people are just not excited or if they’re waiting for November,” she said. “It’s quite surprising to me, I’ll be honest.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Super Tuesday: Trump, Biden win primaries in Arkansas