|
Mississippi |
Alabama |
African American population(2010) % |
37% |
26% |
All non-white pop(2016 est)% |
43% |
32% |
Dem share of state house |
45% |
31% |
Dem share of state senate |
38% |
23% |
Clinton margin(2016) |
-18% |
-28% |
Obama margin(2012) |
-11% |
-23% |
Obama margin(2008) |
-13% |
-22% |
By every metric, Mississippi is 10-15 points better than Alabama.
How to get to 50%
Mississippi has the highest proportion of African Americans of any state. There is also a small but growing Latino population (4% in 2015) as well as just over 1% other minorities. If growth trends continue, minorities will probably make up 43-44% of the population in 2018. The problem is turnout.
In the 2014 senate race, African Americans made up only 30% of the electorate despite making up over 37% of the population. Alabama has shown us that it doesn’t have to be this way. In the most recent election, African Americans made up 28% of the electorate despite making up only 27% of the population.
Imagine these results:
|
Democrat |
Republican |
All non-white voters(44%) |
93% |
6% |
White voters(56%) |
16% |
83% |
Total |
50% |
49%
|
Democrats have gotten between 11% and 16% of the white vote in recent senate elections. One big way to boost this is through the youth vote. In 2014, 18-29 year-olds made up only 9% of the electorate despite making up about 19% of the population. This is far lower than the national average for youth turnout.
The Alabama election would have been close even without the sex scandal
Polling for the Alabama senate race was all over the map before the scandal broke. In the 4 most recent polls, two showed a tie and two showed an 11 point Moore lead for a RCP average Moore lead of about 5-6 points. The CW seems to believe that these polls were somehow correct even though the final polls were off by 4-5 points. If we apply the same error to the early polls that we know occurred in the later polls, we have a very close race with Roy Moore winning by about 1%. This is the most likely outcome of a race with no sex scandal, although we never know what might have happened. Roy Moore’s other crazy positions would have gotten a lot more play in the media.
If we apply the Mississippi demographic shift to the Alabama race, we can see that Doug Jones would have won in a cakewalk if the race had been in Mississippi. Roy Moore was however still a historically terrible candidate, even without the sex scandal. That sort of candidate could never exist out of Alabama, right?…..
The Steve Bannon Factor
In 2014, Republican Chris McDaniel came very ousting longtime senator Thad Cochran in a primary, getting 49.5% of the vote. Cochran managed to survive the primary runoff only with the help of a large number of cross-over democratic votes. McDaniel has been itching to run again and Bannon has been actively encouraging him. Exit polls showed McDaniel possibly losing to Democrat Travis Childers despite the horrible 2014 environment.
McDaniel is not quite as strident as Moore (I don’t think anyone can be), but he’s close. The website Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day does a good job of summing up some the the McDaniel crazy from 2014.
I wrote most of this diary before the news of Thad Cochran’s possible retirement. Two senate races throw the whole state of play into chaos. This is a great time to invest in Mississippi. Competitive races build infrastructure. Winning begets more winning. It’s time to turn the south blue!