Can we agree — except for Sen. Tracy Steele, who doggedly defended his bad idea to move the presidential primary in the D-G this morning — that splitting the Arkansas primary was a disaster? We got no bang from the February presidential primary (and probably wouldn’t have under any circumstances, given our relative unimportance in the national firmament) and the fallout was a record low turnout in the state primaries Tuesday.

I don’t think a unified primary — and the likelihood of greater black voting had Obama been on the ticket this week — would have saved Appeals Court Judge Wendell Griffen, though there was indeed racially polarized voting in that race and black turnout was exceedingly low.

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But here’s an interesting one to consider — the race for state Senate between Sen. Irma Hunter Brown and Joyce Elliott, both black candidates. Elliott turned out the incumbent 3,080 to 2,186, or by 794 894 votes.  But look at the precinct returns, where 469 votes of her margin came from a single, overwhelmingly white voting precinct at Pulaski Heights Presbyterian.  Brown carried a couple of heavily black precincts, but they turned out far fewer voters than normal. Elliott ran strongly enough in black neighborhoods that she likely would have won anyway, but it’s still food for thought.

More black votes wouldn’t have hurt Curtis Keith, who upset JP Annette McCaleb, 593-578, in a race for Quorum Court, but it probably would have widened his margin, which also rested on racially polarized voting. Keith, who is black, ran stronger in areas with significant black voter populations and McCaleb won predominantly white neighborhoods. See the tables on the jump.

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