By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The Republican Party of Arkansas’ victory party Tuesday had a crowd, food and beverages, and a rock-and-roll band. One thing it lacked that would have made it a lot more fun: suspense.

The most important statewide race, the one for governor, was never in doubt. The Associated Press declared Gov. Asa Hutchinson the winner almost immediately after the polls closed. He soon gave a brief victory speech, but the cheers were the kind that comes from people who expected to win. He was followed intermittently by other winning statewide candidates greeted by smaller crowds.

Because I had left to cover the Little Rock mayor’s race, I wasn’t present for the victory speech by the only major Republican candidate who might could have lost.

That would be U.S. Rep. French Hill, who represents the state’s 2nd Congressional District, where a lot of Democrats live in Little Rock. He won, 52-46 percent. His opponent, Rep. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, was actually leading early in the evening when Pulaski County’s early vote totals were announced. But the polls leading up to the election had shown Hill had a comfortable lead, and the district’s heavily Republican outlying counties came in strong for him. He won Saline County with 68 percent of the vote and Faulkner County with 62 percent.

“Inevitable” would be the word to describe most of the election results. Whether candidates won or lost depended not on how they campaigned but on where they lived. For state and national races, Republicans won just about everywhere, except where Democrats usually win. In House District 22, Rep. Mickey Gates, R-Hot Springs, won almost twice as many votes as his Democratic opponent despite Gates being arrested for – and admitting to – not paying state taxes. In fact, he didn’t file a tax return from 2004-2017. It didn’t matter. He had an “R” beside his name.

Five incumbents in the Arkansas House of Representatives did lose. Those included Rep. Michael John Gray, D-Augusta, the Democratic Party of Arkansas’ state chairman; and Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville, who in 2017 sponsored a controversial guns on college campuses bill that morphed into something much bigger.

Being a leader puts a target on your back, but again, their losses were closely related to their addresses. Collins represents a Fayetteville area with many Democratic voters. Republicans knew his race would be tight. Gray is one of the last remaining white Democrats representing a rural legislative district. His county was one of 67 (out of 75) that voted for President Trump in 2016.

We’re still waiting to learn how Republican this state has become. Before the election, Democrats still controlled a majority of the state’s partisan offices because so many longtime county judges, sheriffs and justices of the peace are Democrats. But no doubt Republicans made gains at the local level, as they have in other recent elections.

Meanwhile, the same state that voted for the supposedly pro-business, conservative party also voted 68-32 percent to increase the minimum wage and 54-46 percent to legalize casinos. Arkansas voters may be voting Republican, but they haven’t fully embraced Republican ideology.

I’ll point out three other noteworthy items.

One, Supreme Court Justice Courtney Goodson was re-elected despite being attacked by millions of dollars spent on anonymous “dark money” ads and mailers. That effort may have backfired.

Second, non-major party candidates had a disappointing election. The state’s lone independent legislator, Rep. Mark McElroy, I-Tillar, lost to a Democrat. Libertarians were hoping their gubernatorial candidate, Mark West, could earn 3 percent of the vote, thereby letting the party avoid collecting 10,000 signatures in 2020. He won 2.9 percent.

Finally, turnout was 50 percent, about what it was in the 2014 midterms, though more people voted because more people were registered. Remember those reports about high turnout during early voting? Those just meant more people are getting in the habit of voting when the lines are shorter.

Increasingly, Election Day isn’t so much when we cast votes as when we count them. It’s also when the victory speeches are made, usually by those who knew they’d be making them.

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.