The principal political groups in Arkansas are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, each affiliated with the national party organizations.
Before the Civil War (1861–65), politics in Arkansas were fraught with violence. Republicans ruled during Reconstruction, which officially ended in Arkansas after the constitution of 1874 had been adopted by the new Democratic majority. During the election of 1872, the Liberal Republicans, nicknamed Brindletails, opposed the Radical Republicans, or Minstrels. After the Minstrel candidate, Elisha Baxter, was elected, he proved so independent a governor that some of the party leaders who had supported him attempted to oust him through a court order in April 1874, declaring his defeated opponent, Joseph Brooks, the winner. Supported by a militia of about 300 blacks under white command, Brooks took over the statehouse; Baxter, bolstered by his own 300-man black army, set up his headquarters three blocks away. The so-called Brooks-Baxter War finally ended with President Ulysses S. Grant's proclamation of Baxter as the lawful governor. Baxter did not seek reelection-instead Augustus H. Garland was elected, the first of a long series of Bourbon Democrats who were to rule the state well into the 20th century.
After Reconstruction, blacks in Arkansas continued to vote and to be elected to public office; under what became known as the fusion principle, black Republican and white Democratic leaders in the plantation belt often agreed not to oppose each other's candidates. Segregation in public places was still outlawed, and Little Rock was perhaps the most integrated city in the South. During the 1890s, however, as in the rest of the South, Democrats began to pass laws imposing segregation and disfranchising blacks as well as poor whites. In 1906, the Democrats instituted a nominating primary for whites only.
On the rocky path to progressive government, Arkansans elected several governors who stand out as progressive: George Donaghey (1909–13), Charles Brush (1917–21), Thomas McRae (1921–25), Carl Bailey (1935–39) and Sidney McMath (1948–53). Although elected to the governorship as a progressive in 1954, McMath's protégé Orval Faubus took a segregationist stand in 1957. In subsequent years, poor whites tended to support Faubus, while blacks and more affluent whites opposed him. Faubus's successor, progressive Republican Winthrop Rockefeller, was strongly supported by blacks. Rockefeller was followed by three more progressives, all Democrats: Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, and—after Bumpers and Pryor had graduated to the US Senate—Bill Clinton. In a major upset, Clinton was defeated in 1980 by Republican Frank White, but he recaptured the statehouse in 1982 and won reelection in 1984, 1986, and 1990. Clinton ran for and won the presidency in 1992 with a plurality of 53% in Arkansas. Clinton won presidential reelection in 1996, gaining 54% of the vote, against 37% for Republican challenger Bob Dole and 8% for Independent Ross Perot. In the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush won 51% of the vote to Al Gore's 45% and 2% for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. In 2002 there were 1,616,895 registered voters; there is no party registration in the state. The state had six electoral votes in the 2000 presidential election.
On 8 November 1994, Democratic governor Jim Guy Tucker was one of the few of his party nationwide to resist a Republican challenge. However, in 1996 Tucker was forced to resign following his conviction on charges related to the Whitewater prosecution, and the governorship was assumed by Lieutenant Governor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee was elected in his own right in 1998 and reelected in 2002.
In 1996 the vacated US Senate seat of Democrat David Pryor was won by US Representative Tim Hutchinson, a Republican. Hutchinson was the first Republican ever to be popularly elected to the US Senate from Arkansas. In 1998 Democrat Blanche Lincoln was voted into office, only the second woman in Arkansas history to be elected to the Senate. Democrat Mark Pryor, son of David Pryor, was elected to the US Senate in 2002. Arkansas's US Representatives following the 2002 elections included one Republican and three Democrats. In mid-2003, the state legislature had 27 Democrats and 8 Republicans in the senate, and 70 Democrats and 30 Republicans in the house. In early 2003 there were 22 women serving in the state legislature.