Gratuitous groping

You could say that Arkansas seems by a new poll to be hankering to grope women and kick rear ends.

New data for Arkansas from Talk Business and Politics and Hendrix College suggests that U.S. Sen. John Boozman needs to talk publicly about being such a powerful man that he can get away with grabbing women’s private parts.

Let’s be clear: I’m not saying Boozman behaves that way. Quite to the contrary, I’m certain he doesn’t. I’m saying he is politically burdened in Arkansas by being a gentleman.

To solidify his political standing in the state, Boozman at least needs to get overheard contending that he gropes agreeable ladies at will and with lewd spontaneity and randomness.

It ought to help him with all demographic groups in the state, particularly your church-goers.

Beyond that, this new Arkansas survey tells Boozman that he should declare that American elections are crooked and that he admires the strongman-dictator style of Russian Vladimir Putin and the human-slaughtering style of Syrian Bashar al-Assad.

He also needs to call his opponent “such a nasty lady,” although that will be tricky considering that his opponent is a young male Democrat named Conner Eldridge. Or maybe calling your opponent a wuss is precisely the ticket. It worked in Arkansas for Tommy Robinson, the role model for Trump.

Failing all that, Boozman appears from this new poll to be in line to get re-elected by a mere garden-variety landslide. That’s rather than the Auburn-caliber rout being produced by his party’s presidential standard-bearer, Trump, in a state that has gone certifiably … uh, Republican.

This Talk Business-Hendrix poll, which has been on target in Arkansas since 2010, was taken by robo-calls to 463 respondents Friday. That was after the last presidential debate and as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton solidified a national polling lead over the monstrous cartoon character and colossal debating absurdity that is Trump.

Despite dragging down and threatening to tear asunder the national Republican Party, Trump is shown by this new Arkansas-specific survey to have opened an even more one-sided lead in the state on the experienced and competent former first lady of the state.

Trump led Clinton mid-September by 55-34. Now he leads her by 56-32.5.

Clinton runs worse in Arkansas even than the Kenyan Muslim president.

Meantime, Boozman’s lead over Eldridge has shrunk since mid-September, from 55-29 to 52-34.

Here’s the math: Trump leads Clinton by 23.5 points and Boozman leads Eldridge by 18.

It’s possible that Boozman’s under-performance compared to Trump is not entirely about his failure to grope. Eldridge has been on television driving around in a red truck. Arkansas voters like trucks.

The conventional wisdom to explain away the nationally stymied Trump’s raging popularity in Arkansas has been that he appeals most to the fears and resentments of working-class white males lacking a college education, and that the Arkansas electorate happens to be overrun with rural working-class white males lacking a college education.

But this new survey shows Trump leading in Arkansas among educated whites and women and in all income groups. The only groups with which Clinton leads are minorities and nonchurch-goers.

That seems to say Clinton leads in Arkansas only among African American and Hispanic back-sliders. And there simply aren’t enough of those to save the state.

It’s the white folks in the front pews, men and women, who are praising the Lord, passing the ammunition and hailing the groper.

I suppose there’s one other possibility to explain Trump’s expanded lead in Arkansas over the past stormy month. It could be that Clinton supporters have already despaired and begun to flee the state, perhaps for Texas where Hillary has now pulled in one poll to within three points.

The Hispanic back-slider demographic apparently is much stronger down there.

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@ arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.