Arkansas' population shift toward the northwest shows up in U.S. census data and in decisions based on that data, such as the distribution of state legislative seats.
Census results also reveal a precise location showing the shift: the state's "historic center of population" -- the place where an imaginary, flat map of Arkansas would balance perfectly if each state resident stood on it in their home location.
The center never went west of Perry County or farther north than Mayflower in Faulkner County for 100 years between 1880 and 1980, state calculations show. The state determines those centers after each decennial census.
The balancing point in Arkansas now lies north of Morrilton at Lake Overcup in Conway County, the state's Geographic Information Service Office calculated Dec. 17 based on 2020 census numbers. The latest center continues a steady northwestern trajectory for every census since 1980.
"Before long if lawmakers in the urban centers of Northwest Arkansas and Central Arkansas agree on something, they will get it through the Legislature," said Bill Stovall, who was speaker of the Arkansas House in 2005 and 2006. The concentration of representation in those urban areas plus northeastern Arkansas will become too great for the rest of the state to offset, he said.
"If they can make a political alliance, they can set tax and revenue policy," he said.
The partisan divide between Republicans in Northwest Arkansas and a Pulaski County delegation in Central Arkansas that is still largely Democratic will make little difference, Stovall predicted.
"The political divide in the state is going to be less of a Republican-Democrat divide than an urban-rural one," he said.
The state has 23 Democrats left in the 100-member House, and parts of Central Arkansas are trending Republican, he said. Stovall was a Democrat during his four terms in the House.
Thirteen members of the 100-member House live in either Washington or Benton counties. New district maps approved Nov. 29 will increase that number to 17. Legislative districts are redrawn after each census to equalize their populations.
Pulaski County, the state's most-populous and home county of Little Rock, the state's largest city, will have 13 House members. Neighboring Faulkner County will have six. Any measure in which delegations from those counties agree would need 15 votes out of the remaining 64 House members to pass in that chamber. Another five House seats will be all or partially in Craighead County. Another four will include all or part of Sebastian County, which includes the state's third-largest city, Fort Smith.
Benton County also gained a new seat in the 35-member Senate, giving Benton and Washington counties a combined total of six, with another district that includes southern Washington County.
The ongoing shift in the state's politics is reflected in maps for the state's congressional districts. In 1982, Benton, Washington, Carroll, Crawford and Madison counties were five counties in a 20-county 3rd Congressional District dominated by Fort Smith, then Arkansas' second-largest city.
Those five counties are now the only counties left wholly within the district after new boundaries were drawn earlier this year. A portion of Sebastian County also in the district includes Fort Smith, which is now the third-largest city narrowly ahead of Springdale, census results show. No part of any other county is in the district
Also in 1982, Benton County voters cast 26,322 ballots in that year's governor's race. Washington County's total in the same contest totaled 29,705. The two counties together added up to 7.1% of the vote that year.
In the most recent governor's race in 2018, Benton County came in with 77,534 votes total. Washington County voters cast 65,863 ballots in that race. The two counties combined represented 16% of the vote -- almost one in six of all ballots cast. If state population growth were even, that percentage would have stayed the same.
REASONS FOR SHIFT
Much more plays into the northwestern shift than growth in Northwest Arkansas, said Shelby Johnson, state geographic information officer.
"You can trace this back to the mechanization of agriculture in the 1960s," Johnson said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "As late as the '40s and '50s, the state's population was to the east."
People go where the jobs are, he said. Agriculture was the state's largest job sector before machines such as cotton combines and other harvesters took over row-crop farming.
"In the '20s and '30s and up into the 1940s, agriculture and the people making a living from it were rooted in Pine Bluff and Helena," Johnson said. State calculations show the center of population landed as far east as present-day Sherwood in Pulaski County after the 1960 census, then fell back to north of present-day Maumelle in the next census. The center has moved north and west in every census year since, records show.
Growth in the Jonesboro area of northeastern Arkansas pulls the center to the north even with the greater growth in the west, Johnson said.
The main practical effect of the shift is economic and political, said Mayor Kevin Smith of Helena-West Helena. Smith is a former state senator. Before that, he served in Washington, D.C., on the staff of the late Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark. Smith successfully ran for mayor in 2018.
"A century ago, Helena was what Northwest Arkansas is today," Smith told Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Rex Nelson in 2019. "It was the part of the state where people were moving because there were jobs. We were among the top cities in the country for the hardwood lumber industry with several big mills." The city on the banks of the Mississippi River enjoys access to that waterway.
Smith said he was not surprised at the location of the new population center when contacted by telephone Tuesday.
"It sure feels like it," he said, referring to the state's politics and economy moving away from the east. "But I believe in pendulums. There's a couple right now who have bought one of the historic homes here and who are restoring it who used to work for Walmart. They can do what they do remotely and work from home."
His son, Smith said, came back from California and is buying a house in town for much the same reason: the relatively lower housing prices coupled with the ability to work from home thanks to better and improving internet connections.
"Northern California is beautiful, but first there was the housing prices and then the wildfires came," Smith said.
Rising housing prices could stall the northwesterly trend for Arkansas' population center.
Groups such as the Walton Family Foundation and the Northwest Arkansas Council, both of which identify and work on regional issues, have cited rapidly rising housing prices as a grave threat to Northwest Arkansas' continued growth.
The average sale price for a home in Benton or Washington county rose 44% in the past five years, according to the Arvest Bank Skyline Report of Aug. 31. The average home price jumped 16.2% from January to June when compared with home prices from January 2020 to June 2020, the Arvest report found.
"If people can work wherever they want to, it all depends on education and quality of life," Smith said.
People will work and live in areas with good schools, affordable housing and access to essentials such as clean water -- something his city has plenty of, he said.
"If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere, and we're already seeing it happen here," he said.
Arkansas fastest growing cities
These cities grew by at least 50% between the 2010 and 2020 U.S. Census and had a population of at least 1,000 in 2020:
Cave Springs (Benton County): 217.8%
Brookland (Craighead): 147.5%
Southside (Independence): 100%*
Goshen (Washington): 96.3%
Centerton (Benton): 87%
Austin (Lonoke) 69.8%
Tontitown (Washington): 63%
Prairie Grove (Washington): 60.8%
Elm Springs (Washington): 53.8%
Bentonville (Benton): 53.4%
Gravette (Benton): 52.6%
* Southside was incorporated as a city in 2014
Source: State Geographic Information Systems Office
CORRECTION: Joneboro is in Craighead County. A previous version of this story listed the wrong county.