Mississippi

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Give it a few more years for demographics to shift.  It was Romney's 17th best state and I bet it will be like 20th for the 2016 Republican nominee.

Single. Most. Inelastic. State. In. The. Nation.

I don't think there's any actual evidence for that meme. The fact that Mississippi has sent a lot of Democrats to Congress this century, compared to the typical solidly Republican state, suggests otherwise.

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Mississippi was somewhat close in 2008 and 2012 due to ultra-conservative voters not supporting John McCain and Mitt Romney due to religious differences and ideological disagreements and higher Black turnout for Obama.

There's really no evidence of either of these two things.  The Tea Party types may not have loved Romney, but they hate Obama SO much more that they all came out and voted for him.

Demographic drift is the reason Mississippi has fallen from the 10th or so most Republican state to the 17th or so.  Black birthrates have been higher than white birthrates for decades, and white emigrate to other states at a much higher rate than blacks. Just from 2000 to 2010 Mississippi's white % fell by 2.5 percentage points (I believe that number includes white Hispanics, so the white non-Hispanic rate probably fell slightly more than that), and that trend will continue and probably quicken.  I would expect Mississippi to only barely be majority white by 2030, if not plurality.

Also, remember that even Kerry won the under-30 vote in Mississippi in 2004 (he won it in about 30 states IIRC).  That's now the under-40 vote in Mississippi.  Sure, some of those under-40s have found Jesus and are now good repentant Baptists, but I don't think that's a very high percentage.  On the contrary, old white Mississippians are much more Republican than what is typical of their age group.  This is a fascinating article, although it might be a little too optimistic (from my perspective): http://ablogofrivals.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/mississippi-blues-the-emerging-democratic-majority/

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So should we expect Mississippi to go Democratic before Texas?  How about Georgia? 

I don't know, and you can't really compare the situations anyway.

Texas and Georgia are becoming more possible for Democrats because Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, etc., are becoming more cosmopolitan cities that produce lots of educated people and attract them to move in from other states.  I wish Jackson were like that, I really do, but it's not and may never be.  Texas and Georgia will probably be swing states by 2028, but I doubt they will ever be solidly Democratic states -- there's still lots of religious, conservative rural areas in those states, and I know the Republicans will put a high priority on keeping them.

Mississippi, on the other hand, will reach a demographic tipping point one day and flip from solidly red to solidly blue overnight.  It will happen before the state tips to majority black, since right now about 15-20% of whites vote Democratic compared to the 1-2% of blacks, and it may happen a little sooner, since, as the linked article points out, Mississippi whites over 65 are considerably more hyperRepublican than whites under 65.  While I reject the idea that Mississippi is the most inelastic state in the nation (Gene Taylor, Travis Childers, and Jim Hood are evidence otherwise), it is still a pretty inelastic state, and once the flip happens, that will help the Democrats.

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I like Nate Silver as much as anyone, but there aren't nearly enough data points to determine which state is most inelastic in presidential elections.  You can go back to 1980, and you've gone back way too far to draw any conclusions about today, and you still don't have enough data points.

So you have to look at other races too. The fact that Mississippi has elected Democrats to Congress and statewide offices this century is evidence that Mississippi at least somewhat follows the national trends -- Childers was first elected in 2008 (a very Democratic year), and both he and Taylor were thrown out in 2010 (a very Republican year).  Of course Mississippi is an inelastic state -- I'm not arguing that it isn't-- but there are lots of states that haven't done that much and are probably more inelastic.