Talk Elections

Mississippi has been a GOP stronghold for many elections and lasted voted Democratic in 1976 with Jimmy Carter. (Electoral history from 1988-2016)

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Why did Mississippi swung Democratic in 2012 while most states swung more Republican at the same time?

Higher black turnout. County results suggest Obama did a bit worse among whites in the state in 2012 than his already dismal 2008 level.

The answer to any question about MS is stagnant.

Trump actually lost 11,000 votes compared to Romney,  and 24,000 votes compared to McCain, probably as a result of attrition. Clinton lost 80,000 votes compared to Obama. If Clinton had turned out Obama's voters, she would have had 45%. Which means the Democrats gain 1.5% to 2% each cycle just from attrition of the GOP vote, when they turn out their own voters.


I think it will trend Democratic as the 65 and up demographic dies off, because they are the ones keeping the White Vote at >80% Republican. If the White vote slips into the mid 70's Republican (which is still the most Republican of any state), MS becomes a tossup. If the Democrats nominate Harris or someone who can replicate the excitement of Obama, I think MS is at that point by 2028.

Trending Democrat but only in the sense where I could see it being purple by, say, 2050, and blue by 2070 at this rate. I swear there has to be some kind of instructions Mississippi voters get that makes the state vote always Republican by similar margins. Even with what should be a better Democratic race in their special election it's looking pretty 57-43 for Republicans. They also almost always have the lowest third party % in Presidential races, which suggests that there just aren't many independents there.

Seniors vote more than young people. White Seniors are more Republican than White Millennials even in MS, though MS White Millennials are more Republican than that of any other state. However this doesn't matter because any decline of the GOP among Whites, even just 10% would be catastrophic. 

MS Blacks vote 97% Democratic
MS Whites vote 85% Republican
Lets say the electorate is 65-35 White (it is a little higher but not much).

65 ^ .85  = 55.25%  + (35^.03) = 56.3%
35 ^. 97  = 33.95%  + (65^.15) = 43.7%


Lets run it again with Whites at 75% Republican.

65 ^ .75  = 48.75%  + (35^.03) = 49.8%
35 ^. 97  = 33.95%  + (65^.25) = 50.2%


For MS not to trend Democratic, you are betting on the longevity of seniors in one of the most unhealthy states in the union (obesity, smoking etc) or Millennials being the just as Republican as their parents to the tune where they won't even drop 10% in Republican voting.

If you had the white vote of 1988 in MS swung so Dukakis and H.W Bush are equal in terms of terms of the PV, black turnout of 2012 Mississippi would be around 46-47% democratic in 2012.

A battleground state in 10 years

This is great analysis although it brings up the question of if the black vote can also become slightly depolarized in 10-20 years in Mississippi. This seems crazy today but so did the notion that Trump would match/slightly exceed Romney’s performance with Latinos in early-mid 2016. 

A slightly more friendlier face GOP that still has a staunch center-right position on immigration, pro fair trade, and pro manufacturing could end up doing 5-10 points better with the black vote in Mississippi down the line. This is a state with a lot of black manufacturing workers after all. We do know young black men are already less democratic than their elder counterparts.

All that does is buy them another cycle or two. 5% would reduce the Dem % by 1.5% overall give or take. Could make the difference in a tight race, but it is not going to reverse a trend or replace the losses the GOP is experiencing among their most solid voters from attrition.

http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/state/MS/president/

R+2 in 30-39, R+16 in 40-49, R+9 in 50-64, and R+56 in 65+.

True but I’d combine that with the the state also having a notorious brain drain problem. Democrats can’t keep a lot of those left leaning younger voters in MS when they’re leaving the state.

There is a massive age gap in most every Southern state. Adam made a map that illustrated just how substantial it is (I should really keep that thing tabbed). VA is skewed I think by the extremely low 2014 turnout meaning the millennials polled were not representative and hence why Gillespie did so well in NOVA against Warner and why the map doesn't have VA colored like say CO.


The Solid DEM South Shall Rise Again!!! And this time thanks to millennials, minorities and college educated whites.



and D+12 among those 18-29.

Whites also voted 89% for Romney and comprised just 59% of the electorate with Obama boosting black turnout to the mid 30's. So while having Obama goosed the white vote for the Republicans, it was still more than counteracted by the increased black and young voter turnout.

Logically what NCYankee has laid out makes sense but it’s hard to reconcile the idea that MS will become a tossup given its brain drain problem and it being...Mississippi. I guess we’ll see how the senate race there plays out this year.

I wouldn't expect anything noticeable to happen in a midterm.

If Bill Clinton (D, AR) could not win Mississippi, then no Democrat is going to win Mississippi with the current pattern barring a 450-EV blow-out.

Should Republicans have trouble with the farm vote in 2020, they might lose such a blowout. In such a case, Mississippi is the least of Republican problems.

Georgia and Texas are closer to flipping to the Democratic column than Mississippi will ever be. 

Not really as Seniors now are overwhelmingly Boomers and late Silent

At this point, it’s obvious but that doesn’t even answer the question.

Mississippi will be a very Republican state up until the 2030s and 40s, when the minority population will overtake the white population and, naturally, cause Mississippi to become more Democratic. Black voters seem to be very inelastic and the modern GOP is trying to make sure that they never vote Republican.

Yup

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Yes, and stagnant. It could inch itself a bit more Democratic in a few election cycles via slightly increasing black % of the vote, but it's gonna take decades. Unlike Georgia/North Carolina/Virginia, population growth is also stagnant so there's hardly any new voters to shift things quickly.

AP and EG, you guys are are not taking into account the effect of Millennial displacement of Seniors dragging down the GOP vote among whites.

Remember as I calculated above, Whites going down to just 75% Republican, makes Mississippi a tie and the few exit polls we have show a massive skew towards Republicans among those 65 and older.

While that could happen, I don't think it's unreasonable to predict they will get more Republican with age. Taking the 18-29 or 30-39 age bracket numbers can have a high margin of error, even higher when broken down by race. There's also the possibility of Dem dropoff in the black vote by 5-10% that gets underestimated.

Yes I considered that, but the fact that the skew among seniors is so gappingly large and the high floor the GOP needs among whites, leads me to think the GOP will start losing ground at an accelerated pace over the next 10 to 15 years.

I don't think they will improve much among rural blacks, certainly not in MS.

The answer to the first question is easy- "yes" or if not yes outright, certainly among the most.  The South (and in particular, the Deep South), is the most inelastic region in the country, with FL as the only exception.  If it's not MS, then maybe AL?  But we're splitting hairs at that point.

The second question is also relatively easy- trending D long-term and it's pretty obvious.  NC Yankee has the correct analysis here, although one quibble- 2028 (even with an Obama type) seems optimistic. 

TTimmy, I don't think the brain drain issue (let's assume it continues) will have much an effect.  White millennials leaving will just be overwhelmed by White seniors dying off (of which there are more by the way), and the net effect is at best, zero.  Even if migration out is particularly severe (which is not unrealistic, MS is almost last in growth nation-wide, at 0.6%, and had a -4% growth of millennials over the past decade), I think that maybe just delays the inevitable by a decade or so.  Although you do have a point, and it's one reason why I think 2028 is a little too soon.

The only thing that will keep MS from flipping D eventually is if the black vote dramatically changes, and I don't think just a little depolarization would do it TTimmy.  Basically the black vote would have to essentially flip parties and start voting R... and while I won't say it will never happen, it's the sorta thing that would require a significant and unpredictable national black-swan type event.

By the 2030s or 40s, some less sophisticated political analysts will be scratching their heads and saying.. well gee, how in the world did MS ever flip.  When really, it was always pretty obvious.  The same thing will be said for ME (the counter-part to MS, in some ways, right up to the anemic growth), when in a few decades it is likely to be one of the most Republican states in the country.  ME will flip way before MS though, in fact, it's already happening as we speak.

Maine is going to become one of the most Republican states in the country? doubt.

ME is one of only two states in the country where millennials are actually more Republican than old people, the state ranks near last in the country in growth, is one of the least densely populated, is mostly rural and is the whitest state in the country at near 95%.  It also trended and swung R in '16 (it had one of the largest R trends in the country in '16) and the GOP already flipped one EV.

You want to tell me what trends favor the Dems here, I'm all ears.

I'm not denying it's going to get more Republican, but it's hard to imagine it ever voting more than, say, R+10 unless the counter trends in ME-01 are reversed.

Ah, OK.  Fair.  Apologies for assuming you were making a different point and being a little snarky.

Admittedly, part of what I'm saying is speculative, but I think it's grounded in a couple of key facts.  The most important being that ME millennials are more R-leaning than the seniors.  This is quite unusual, in fact, almost nowhere else in the country do you see this, even places like WY and ND.  So what happens when some millennials become more conservative when they age?  Well, in a place like CO where millennials are upwards of D+60, maybe nothing, or very subtle effects.  But in ME, when your baseline average millennial is actually more Republican than a baby boomer?  The dam could burst wide open.

I think it's not fully manifesting itself yet because ME is severely skewed in age- seniors don't quite outnumber millennials 2:1, but it's up there.  We're talking FL numbers, not CA.  Your point is taken with regards to ME-1, but at some point it will just be overwhelmed.  Maybe not in 2020,  but it will happen unless something changes.  Consider that every county but one trended R in ME, even in ME-1, and even Cumberland still swung R.  Growth in ME is also truly abysmal, it's less than 1%, and the only thing keeping it from being down at WV or IL levels is some modest growth in the Portland area.  So I simply don't see where the Dems are going to get the votes in a couple decades.

I could certainly be wrong, no doubt about it, but that's how I see it right now.

One word will explain when Mississippi goes politically liberal: miscegenation. That will utterly destroy the tribalism in Mississippi politics in which even tiny hick towns have machine politics based on even a bare racial majority.

Bump

Well, with almost all the votes counted, Mississippi really stands out compared to other states:

>Contrary to the consensus in this poll, it has both swung AND trended right for two consecutive cycles now. In 2012, it voted R by 11 points (15 points to the right of the nation), in 2016, it voted R by 18 points (20 points to the right of the nation) and now in 2020, it appears to have voted R by around 20 points (~25 points to the right of the nation).

>Turnout has also decreased for two consecutive cycles now (especially surprising in 2020 when almost every state saw massive turnout increases). 2020 might have 100k (~8%) less votes cast than 2012 even though the population stayed more or less the same.

What can explain these?

There are still votes left to be counted in Mississipi...Biden will likely reduce the margin once after total count is finished

Will it be by enough to reduce the R trend or eliminate the R swing?

A lot of people have wondered whether younger voters will turn MS blue as younger whites are less Republican, well according to the Fox Exit poll, Trump won voters aged 18-29 by 3% in MS, he won overall by 16.5% so there was 13-14% difference between how the electorate overall voted vs 18-29 year olds in MS, across the US as a whole, Biden won 18-29 voters by 25%, winning nationally by 4.4%.

What that means is MS is less polarized by age than the US as a whole and Trump carried 18-29 year old voters in MS which means it is likely staying red moving forward. Here is MS' partisan lean since 2000:

2000: R+17.4
2004: R+17.3
2008: R+20.4
2012: R+15.4
2016: R+19.9
2020: R+20.9

MS this year is on track to vote the most Republican relative to the country of any election this century.

Yes, I don't get all the Mississippi Dem hype.  It's just too rural and very few people went to college. 

What is the other state in question?

Iowa

All it took was a few election cycles to debunk the Mississippi trending left narrative, including coming from Republicans.

The way I look at it, since voters in their 20’s seem to become more republican as they age into their 30’s, you can see how voters in their 20’s in 2008 are voting now, any state where republicans outright win the 18-29 vote is staying republican for decades to come unless there is a realignment.

Given the vote results, it seems virtually impossible for this to be true in Iowa.  If you looks at Census Data for Iowa for % over 65.  The counties with the lowest % of 65 and over, the metro and university counties, Polk, Dallas, Linn, Story, Johnson.  Biden won them all by 14 points plus except Dallas which is lost by 2.  Conversely, all the rural counties in Iowa have very high concentrations of over 65 and of course he lost all the rural counties usually by large margins.  It would take some seriously contorted voting patterns to make this happen. 

It's more likely that the exit polls are basically crap.