LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas – In an eleventh-hour bid to coax his native state back into the Democratic column, President Clinton told Arkansas voters last night that they should follow New York’s lead and back Senator Kerry’s campaign for the White House.

“How come we’re for Kerry? I think people there know more about homeland security and terrorism than anybody on Earth. We paid the price. We’re not afraid,” Mr. Clinton said.

Speaking to several thousand Democrats at a downtown convention center, the former president demonstrated the same blend of Southern populism and serious policy talk that carried him to two terms in the White House.

“Let’s just shell down the corn here. I’m going to talk about some things that no other Democrat can talk about,” Mr. Clinton said. “I’m not running for anything.”

“How come we’re not winning Arkansas by the same margins I did?” he asked. “Out in the country they’re wearing us out on guns and gay marriage.”

Mr. Clinton dismissed the argument that Mr. Kerry would seek to take guns from hunters and sportsmen. “It’s a load of bull,” the former president said. “I used to go out and spend a day with John Kerry every summer. And you know what we did? We put on our boots and rode horses all day long up in the mountains.”

Mr. Clinton said Mr. Kerry’s opposition to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was based on concerns about the role of the federal government.

“Kerry’s position is you know we ought to be careful when we amend the Constitution,” the former president said. “I think Kerry’s right about it.” The statement drew applause from the crowd, even though Mr. Clinton was in the somewhat awkward position of making a states’ rights argument to a largely African-American audience.

Until recently, political operatives from both parties widely assumed that Arkansas would vote for President Bush, probably by a substantial margin. Most polls continue to show Mr. Bush ahead here by about five percentage points – the margin by which he defeated Mr. Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, here in 2000. However, one survey taken in October showed Mr. Bush ahead by only about two percentage points and another showed the race tied.

Buoyed by those numbers, the Democratic National Committee and independent groups that support Mr. Kerry purchased about $450,000 worth of television and radio advertising in Arkansas late last week. Republicans have responded with a smaller advertising buy in support of Mr. Bush.

In his speech to the Democratic campaign workers, Mr. Clinton said he believes the state and its six electoral votes could still go to Mr. Kerry. “We got two days here. And you can still win here,” he said.

In a brief interview with The New York Sun, the former president said he wasn’t really sure how close the race is in Arkansas. “I do not know because, you know, I haven’t really had any direct access to any of the polling. I know it’s really intense,” he said. “I think it’s a mistake to just let the election go around between, you know, six or seven states. I think we ought to broaden it a little bit. I feel good about it.”

Several months ago, Mr. Clinton reportedly counseled Mr. Kerry to focus more on domestic issues. Last night, however, the former president told the Sun that the undecided voters are likely to make their choice based on whom they trust to respond to the threats facing America. “This whole thing’s about the security issue,” he said.

Republicans professed to be unconcerned yesterday about Mr. Clinton’s effort to sway voters here.

“Even with Bill Clinton – and he’s a great campaigner, nobody takes that away from him – but selling John Kerry in a conservative state like Arkansas is tougher than selling Red Sox souvenirs in Manhattan,” the governor of Arkansas, Michael Huckabee, said yesterday in an interview with Fox News.

Tomorrow, Arkansas residents will also be voting on a referendum that would change the state’s constitution to ban state-sanctioned gay marriage. Mr. Huckabee said that will help bring to the polls voters who oppose both Mr. Kerry and his stance against adding such a provision to the federal Constitution.

“If somebody wants to rearrange and rewrite the Bible, the Koran and the Torah, I think that it’s important to go ahead and redefine the Constitution and say that relationships are one thing but marriage means between a man and a woman,” the governor said.

Political analysts here said there was no obvious explanation for why Mr. Bush might be doing worse in the state this year than he did in 2000. “I think the state could, possibly, be in play,” a political science professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Arthur English, said. “If you look at minority employment, it’s not good. If you look at manufacturing jobs, it’s not good.”

The unemployment rate in Arkansas, at 5.5%,is in line with the national rate, but the state has lost 35,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000, according to federal statistics. Other analysts point out that Arkansas has provided a disproportionate share of military personnel for the war in Iraq.

Since January, more than 130,000 new voter registrations have been recorded in the state. Observers say Mr. Kerry should pick up most of those voters, if they turn out tomorrow.

Senator Lincoln of Arkansas boasted yesterday about the effort to register new voters in the state. “We have busted our chops,” she said. However, the senator, who is up for re-election tomorrow, fretted publicly that bad weather on Election Day could spell trouble for Democratic turnout. “It’s going to be a rainy day on Tuesday,” the senator said, before asking campaign volunteers to redouble their efforts.

While some Republicans have suggested that Mr. Clinton was wrong to try to use his local connections to win a state that is no longer his home, he said last night that he has done more for Arkansas recently than Mr. Bush has. The former president noted that his presidential library is set to open later this month in Little Rock. “As a private citizen, in the last four years I created more jobs in Arkansas than the Bush administration did,” Mr. Clinton joked.

Mr. Clinton did not try to hide his New York ties, nor to disguise the economic class of the people he socializes with these days. Instead, he argued that those people consider Mr. Bush’s tax policies to be misguided.

“Now that I live in New York, I know a lot of Republican as well as Democratic millionaires,” he said. “I do not know any of them that wanted this tax cut.”

Mr. Clinton, who had heart-bypass surgery two months ago, seemed to be in good spirits, though he was bit more subdued than in past campaigns. As he spoke last night, he often paused mid-sentence to take a breath.

After wrapping up his remarks, the former president, who is one of America’s great political handicappers, could not resist the chance to indulge in a little electoral college math. Mr. Clinton stood on stage intently discussing the electoral map with Rep. Marion Barry. The former president’s comments could not be heard clearly by reporters, but he mentioned Michigan and New Hampshire and seemed to be describing various scenarios under which Mr. Kerry could prevail.