[shepard-for-congress-discuss] The Mississippi Primary Thread: "Last One of These for Six Weeks" Edition

[meuserj at gmail.com]

The race was followed on Reason Hit & Run blog.

Sent to you by John via Google Reader: The Mississippi Primary
Thread: "Last One of These for Six Weeks" Edition via Reason Magazine -
Hit & Run by dweigel at reason.com (David Weigel) on 3/11/08 Mississippi
The Democrats (33 delegates) - Barack Obama suffered, arguably, his
worst news cycle of the campaign in the run-up to the March 4
primaries. You can follow it on the Gallup tracking poll or on the
polls of Texas and Ohio, or in the gap between early Texas voting and
election day voting: Obama's trajectory shifted at the 11th hour, and
he lost. Every indication now, however, points to an Obama recovery. He
dispatched Clinton in Wyoming by 23 points (comparable to his Feb. 5
victory in just-as-white, just-as-barren North Dakota), and he should
crush Clinton in Mississippi.

This is the deep, deep South, largely rural, and there is no state on
the radar at all like Mississippi. But we can compare it to Alabama to
get a sense of whether Clinton has gained any momentum in these
less "relevent," less-hotly-contested states that she lost badly in the
run-up to March 4. In Alabama, 51 percent of voters were black, and
they went for Obama over Clinton 84 to 15. But the white vote gap was
the largest it's been in any state since John Edwards decided to spend
more time with his family--72 to 25 for Clinton. Those numbers, and the
numbers of Democrats who 1)rule out voting for the other candidate or
2)rule out a "dream ticket," will be worth watching. Also worth
watching will be the white/black proportion of the vote. In 2004, a
majority--56 percent--of primary voters were black. And check out how
Republican voters break. Will the "Limbaugh" effect continue, or are
Republican cross-over voters going to play it straight out of fear of a
resurgent Clinton? (The fact that both of the GOP districts, the 1st
and 3rd, are holding very competitive primaries, should cut down the
crossover vote.)

I'm predicting an Obama win of about 17 points to win 6 or 7 of the 11
statewide delegates. In the heavily black 2nd district (Jackson and the
Mississippi Delta) Obama will win in a landslide, scoring 5 of 7
delegates. The rest of the congressional districts, with 5 delegates,
will split 3-2: Obama will probably win the 3rd district, Clinton will
win the 1st (northeast) and 4th (Gulf Coast).

The Republicans (36 delegates) - Will John McCain win? Oh, obviously.
But will he cross the crucial Bush line, the political yardstick I
carved while I was writing this post? In 2000, Mississippi held its
vote at the exact same time in the cycle as it did this year, right
after the front-runner locked up the nomination. That year George W.
Bush won 88 percent of the vote against the still-active Alan Keyes
campaign (5.6 percent) and the inactive McCain insurgency (5.5
percent). This year Huckabee is still on the ballot, and Paul is still
leading his rEVOLution. Will McCain, who has lost every Deep South
state save South Carolina to Huckabee, hit 88 percent? I doubt it: I
expect him to break 80 percent but watch a sizable chunk of the vote go
to Huckabee, then to Paul. (The high watermark vote for an inactive
candidate in this election cycle has been John Edwards's 10.2 percent
in Oklahoma.)

Other races
Indiana-7: There's a smidgen of suspense in this race to replace the
late Rep. Julia Carson. While the Indianapolis-centered district voted
by 16 points for John Kerry (up, actually, from Al Gore's 12-point
margin in 2000), Indiana Republicans were buoyed by the surprise 2007
election of Mayor Greg Ballard. The Democrats nominated Carson's
inexperienced, Islamic-convert grandson Andre: The GOP nominated a
rising star from the state House, Jon Elrod. If the Democrats can take
Denny Hastert's seat, can the GOP defeat a nepotistic dud in
Indianapolis? Probably not. Libertarian candidate Sean Shepard will
take protest votes from anti-Carsonites who aren't impressed by Elrod,
and enough Democrats will turn out to get Carson to 50 percent at least.

UPDATE 7:26: It's too early to say anything, but Carson is leading the
Indiana race. From 0 to 2 Muslim congressmen in less than two years:
Virgil Goode was right! Except that Carson, like Keith Ellison, is an
African-American who converted to Islam later in life, not a scary
immigrant.

UPDATE 8:05: The networks won't call it yet, but with about half of the
vote being black and going 91-9 for Obama, and Obama scoring an
Alabama-like 27 percent of the white vote, he'll win going away. It
might be closer to 56-43 than the 58-41 I expected. Tim Russert's
comment that there's a "growing racial divide" here was probably off
the cuff, but it's still wrong. This is how white Deep South voters
roll.

UPDATE 8:18: John McCain might not break 80 percent of the vote, or
even 76 percent. The first exits show a protest vote of about 11
percent for Huckabee and 7 percent for Paul. Ninety percent of voters
say they like him, but among the (shrinking) anti-illegal immigration
vote he only scored 62 percent.

UPDATE 8:29: Here's a fun number: 37 percent of Democrats have a
favorable impression of John McCain. Clinton wins those voters 62-37.

UPDATE 8:32: Maybe the Limbaugh effect is alive. In Alabama, Obama
split the independent vote with Clinton and lost Republicans by only 7
votes. Here he's winning the independent vote, narrowly, by 3 points.
The Republican vote is going to Clinton by about 50 points. It would be
specious to pin that all on Limbaugh, though. The bottom line is that
Obama's "I can win the deep South because I'll turn out black voters"
is bunk. He has no shot whatsoever at Mississippi or Alabama: His 99
percent of the black vote will be swamped by a landslide of white votes
for McCain, many of them from Democrats.



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