The president barely came out of Tuesday with wins in Kentucky and Arkansas. Obama struggles in primaries

President Barack Obama continued to have trouble on Tuesday performing in Democratic primaries in traditionally conservative states, barely eking out wins in Kentucky and Arkansas.

The president didn’t even have an opponent in Kentucky, but with 99 percent of the vote counted, Obama took just 57.9 percent of the vote, with the remaining more than 42 percent of ballots cast for “uncommitted.”


In Arkansas, with 70 percent of the vote tallied, Obama nabbed just 59 percent of the vote. His opponent there, John Wolfe, was able to take 41 percent of the vote at that point, according to The Associated Press.

Wolfe, an attorney from Tennessee whose platform includes repealing “Obamacare,” was able to win several counties.

Mitt Romney fared better in the two primaries, but even the presumptive GOP nominee, who has had trouble exciting the conservative wing of his base, didn’t turn in a stellar performance.

( Also on POLITICO: Arkansas and Kentucky primaries, by the numbers)

While Kentucky and Arkansas are red states that the presumptive GOP nominee is expected to win easily in November and that John McCain took handily in 2008, Republicans were quick to tout Obama’s poor numbers in both states.

Obama didn’t pick up either state in the Democratic primary in 2008, when he was in a heated battle for the nomination with Hillary Clinton. He took only 30 percent of the primary vote in Kentucky and 26 percent of the vote in Arkansas, a state where Clinton was a clear favorite after her husband served as governor there for more than a decade.

This year was a low-turnout election with little draw for voters since both the Republican and Democratic primaries have been decided.

Voter turnout in Kentucky was just shy of 14 percent, with four congressional primaries — two Republican and two Democrat — the only other top-of-the-ballot contests being decided, with 99 percent of the vote counted.

Obama has had trouble this year in Democratic primaries in conservative states. When West Virginians headed to the polls earlier this month, nearly 43 percent of Democratic primary voters opted for Keith Judd, a convicted felon currently serving time in a Texas federal prison. Republicans seized on Obama losing a handful of counties in West Virginia, pointing to it as proof that even Democrats aren’t happy with the incumbent.

Primaries are more complicated in deeply conservative states, where social conservatives once dominated the Democratic Party and have slowly become Republicans over the past few decades. Democrats still hold a registration majority in Kentucky, although the state hasn’t voted to send one to the White House since Bill Clinton.

In Kentucky, with 99 percent of the vote tallied, Romney took about 67 percent of the vote. Ron Paul, who is no longer actively campaigning, got 13 percent of the vote.

And Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, both of whom have withdrawn from the race, got a combined 15 percent of the vote. About 6 percent of voters opted for “uncommitted” in the GOP presidential primary.

In Arkansas, Romney took about 69 percent of the vote, compared with 13 percent for Paul, 13 percent for Santorum and 5 percent for Gingrich, with 70 percent of the vote tallied, according to the AP.

If Democrats are looking for a silver lining in Kentucky, Obama did better than Romney when it came down to raw votes: 119,284 Kentuckians voted for Obama compared with 117,599 for Romney.