Unlike most states, Arkansas drew its Democratic strength from the countryside, in the culturally Southern eastern part, where a modest-size black population and residual support among conservative white Democrats gave the party a path to victory. Part of the reason for the severity of recent Democratic losses is simply that there were more conservative, white voters for Democrats to lose.

Republicans have long held strength in the state’s conservative metropolitan areas, which have experienced explosive population growth over the last decade. In contrast with Florida, Virginia or North Carolina, in Arkansas the growing metropolitan counties are not attracting a significant number of Democratic-leaning, nonwhite, non-Southern or young voters. Instead, they are attracting new Republicans, who could overwhelm the traditionally Democratic countryside — if Democrats ever won back those voters.

Population growth is centered in the conservative exurbs of Little Rock and in the urbanized stretches of the traditionally Republican Ozarks of northwest Arkansas, in Washington and Benton Counties, Bentonville, where Wal-Mart is based, and Fayetteville. The white exurban counties ringing Little Rock — Saline, Faulkner and Lonoke — grew by 30 percent over the last decade, and their combined population now rivals that of slower-growing and traditionally Democratic Pulaski County, where Little Rock is. The combined population of Benton and Washington Counties grew by 45 percent since 2000 — roughly the same as Wake County, home of North Carolina’s capital, Raleigh.

But these areas are nothing like Raleigh, and they’re mainly attracting white migrants from elsewhere in the South. As a result, none of these counties have moved toward the Democrats. President Obama fared worse there in 2012 than either John Kerry or Al Gore.