Thanks for the answers... I knew racism had something to do with it, but had no idea about the actual MS election process.
Still find it fascinating that in 1964 MS voters (who I'm assuming were all white), were SO homogenous.
EDIT: then again, checking the 2008 exit poll, whites in MS went 88-11 McCain. LA and AL are similar, and outside of those 3 it seems to normalize to a degree. This is 2008 for god's sake, that's just unbelievable.
Yeah, it's pretty despicable. I mean, you could argue against the racist angle and say that whites in the deep south just happen to be overehelmingly conservative, but even that doesn't justify close to 90% of whites voting Republican when the vote is much more split in almost every other state. Even whites in Utah gave Obama more support.
So when you examine the facts you realize that racial politics still exist in the south in a big way. 1964 was just the first election that began to turn the "solid south" the other way.
