These days, southern Dems run ahead of the national Democratic ticket, as we've seen with Manchin, Pryor, Landrieu, Hagan etc- for obvious reasons. It looks like in the 1990s southern Dems did worse than the Clinton ticket, so LA in 1996 wasn't an exception. Republicans also won their senate seats in TN and KY while Clinton won both of those states.
crazy times.
Well, Democrats didnt run a real candidate against Thompson in Tennessee. In Kentucky, Beshear was pretty much second-tier back then and McConnell was a heavily funded incumbent. Also throw in the fact that Dole would have likely won both TN and KY had Perot not been in the ballot. That clearly wouldnt have been the case in LA and AR.