It is one of those thoughts that intrudes unexpectedly, one you quickly dismiss and are almost embarrassed to speak aloud. It’s crazy, you say.
Yet it persists, because there is some measure of legitimacy to it that you can’t entirely ignore:
In November, will Mississippi go blue?
Historically, it seems impossible, a foolish question. Mississippi has been reliably Republican in the past nine presidential elections. In fact, since 1948, the Democratic nominee has carried the state just twice (Adlai Stevenson in ’56 and Jimmy Carter in ’76).
The GOP candidate hasn’t captured less than half of the total votes in the state since 1996, when Ross Perot siphoned off enough votes to ensure a close victory for Bill Clinton.
In this year’s state primaries, Republicans went to the polls in almost twice the number of Democrats.
Across the state, the GOP has a strangle-hold on state offices. Of eight state-wide elected posts, only attorney general Jim Hood is a Democrat. The state has a Republican governor and lieutenant governor and holds a super-majority in both the state house and senate.
So the idea that Mississippi could be in play for the Democrats this November seems as unlikely as, say, a reality TV host winning the GOP presidential nomination.
And yet, there are some indicators that support the notion that this may not be the slam dunk for Republicans we have come to expect.
In the state’s only presidential poll, taken in April, he Mason-Dixon Poll showed Trump with 46 percent and Clinton with 43 percent, which is within the margin of error.
In the primaries this spring, Trump collected just 9,308 more votes in his primary than Hillary Clinton did in hers.
Then there is another vote, this one taken last November, that might be worth considering. That election featured a fierce showdown over education. A ballot initiative to change the state constitution and require full funding of K-12 education — Initiative 42 — was narrowly defeated as the Republican leadership mounted a furious campaign to defeat it.
Although the initiative failed, it’s worth noting that 323,805 Mississippians defied the state GOP and voted for the amendment.
That stinging, narrow defeat is still felt among those voters, many of whom were/are Republicans. And as the state’s economy appears to be in a free-fall, with basic services being cut and tax cuts to corporations continuing even as state income continues to decline, a political fault-line is developing. You hit people in the pocket book or disrupt their lives by denying the services they rely on and all the sudden that “R” behind some politician’s name doesn’t have the power it once had. Even a tax cut doesn’t achieve much once folks realize that corporations are getting the big breaks, while regular folks are left tax cuts of the pocket-change variety.
The Republicans have all the rope in Mississippi. And they seem determined to hang themselves with it.
By November, we may well discover that while there are still more Republicans in our state than Democrats, there aren’t as many as there were even a year ago.
Then, there is this: During his appearance at the Neshoba County Fair last week, Gov. Phil Bryant told Clarion-Ledger reporter Jimmie Gates that Trump would be making a campaign stop in the Jackson area on Aug. 26.
That’s telling. A candidate’s time and resources are generally directed where it matters most. In the stretch run of an election, candidates don’t campaign in states they believe they have locked up or can’t win.
Ultimately, of course, Mississippi is pretty much a non-factor in presidential races. The state has just six electoral votes, losing a vote after the 2000 Census showed the state’s population has shrunk in proportion to the other states. The state is one of two states to have had negative population growth in 2015. Barring some remarkable development, that flight will continue and you can expect the state to shed another electoral vote after the 2020 Census. Mississippi then will be West Virginia, essentially.
So will Mississippi go blue in November?
No, but it probably doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things anyway.
But a lighter shade if red could matter a great deal in determining whether the GOP will continue its domination of state politics.
In that respect, going blue could be — as Candidate Trump likes to say– huge.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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