MS: Rasmussen: McCain up by 6%

[minionofmidas]

44% is indeed Obama's absolute ceiling.

McCain wins by low double digits.

Correction: Losing by 6 is indeed Obama's absolute ceiling (unless a miracle happens.)
This is not to say that 44, or a McCain win by low double digits (same thing really) are unrealistic... indeed, they're more likely.

According to this poll, Obama wins young voters (18-29) 75% to 22%. Doesn't this mean he's winning white voters among this age group?

I think Kerry won this group in 2004 anyway.

Indeed. According to 2004 exit polls, Kerry won young voters in Mississippi. We mostly dismissed this as a lolworthy subsample (though partly explained by the slightly higher black percentage in this group), but maybe we were wrong about that (although that would mean that in areas with a statistically significant white (prez elections) Dem presence... ie the Hill Country - Kerry must have done quite well among young voters. Which is a stretch.) 75-22 though seems laughable.

[minionofmidas]

Time to bump this thread.

[minionofmidas]

Believe me, Muscrove doesn't want Obama anywhere near Mississippi.  He'll need at least one third of the white vote to eek out a win.  He doesn't want to be tied to Obama.

At least not too closely. (He can't distance himself too far either... he needs the Black vote too.)

[minionofmidas]

He'll need at least one third of the white vote to eek out a win.

Can you show us the math on that? Thanks.

If (nonwhite Musgrove voters minus nonwhite Wicker voters)=30 percent of major-party vote cast, a third of the white major-party vote would bring Musgrove to 53%.
What was the Black share of the vote in 2004, 34? 35? Subtract a handful of black Republicans and his figures are off but not all that far off.

[minionofmidas]

I always thought it would have to be more like 25%, most likely, 20% at least. 33% sounds high.  Like I said before, Musgrove's problem geographically in MS is that most of the whites who care interested in voting Democratic live in Wicker's CD.

...or more to the point, the eastern half of it. Where Wicker is from. Musgrove himself is from the CD.

Although there are some such people in Taylor's district as well... and that's just talking at the presidential level.

[minionofmidas]

Made a stupid little calculation based on the figures in the thread above: (%Kerry - %Black)/ (1 - %Black). That is to say, an approximation of Kerry's *minimum* share of the white vote, by county. For most Black Belt counties, and even some white majority counties, this gives a negative figure, btw. That may mean that Bush received more Black votes than Kerry received White votes, in absolute terms. It may also be due to turnout and % under 18 differences.



Counties with figures over 10% (Rounding-created ties broken by alphabet, not actual result order:)
Tishomingo 32
Alcorn 31
Benton 25 (only white-majority county to vote for Kerry - it has a high black pop. as well.)
Itawamba 24
Prentiss 24
Hancock 23
Lafayette 21
Harrison 20
Tippah 20
De Soto 18
Marshall 17 (only black-majority county to figure on this list)
George 14
Chickasaw 13
Monroe 13
Union 13
Pearl River 12
Jackson 11
Lee 11
Oktibbeha 11
Pontotoc 11
Stone 11
Tate 11

16 of the 18 counties from De Soto south to Yalobusha and then east to Monroe, with the exceptions along the perimeter (Panola and Calhoun). A working definition of the Mississippi Hill Country, including the Memphis Metro. (EDIT: Sorry. This would be the definition if the list included Yalobusha and excluded Oktibbeha. Pop. is still correct, though.)
And 6 counties on the Gulf Coast.

Combined population of 16 county area 566k (of which 107k in DeSoto and 76k in Lee - 2000 census data, as also for black pop.)
Combined population of 6 county area 446k (of which 190k in Harrison and 131k in Jackson

Hill Country's not as dominant among White Mississippi Democrats as I thought.

[minionofmidas]

Note the reason why I said *clear majority* and not *huge majority*

I did this mostly because I wanted to know, not to score points against you.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Oh yeah. For another day though. Right now I was mostly interested in where the white straight ticket Dems are at.

[minionofmidas]

what effect will the Hurricane Katrina devastation have on election trends, considering the coastal area must have considerably a reduced population as compared to 2004?

The coastal area has a somewhat reduced population as compared to 2004. (I would call immediately post-Katrina to immediately pre-Katrina a "considerable" reduction, though it's not comparable to New Orleans and St Bernard, but it's bounced back a good bit since.) Whether this might have any effect on state election trends depends, of course, on where these people went, which I have no clue about.

It's not obviously a political mistake at all. Obama going to Mississippi drives up black turnout. Whether Musgrove campaigns alongside Obama or not is another matter. Childers threaded this needle nicely, we saw.

What you guys have to be aware of, as you learned when Greg Davis crashed and burned, is that you won't be able to tie Musgrove to Obama without having it blow up in your face. This isn't Kerry; you're going to juice Musgrove's vote if you do that. It will be fun to see how Wicker tries to accomplish this, as he's smart enough to see that this Republican strategy blew up badly.

A wee bit of hubris/hackery here... this *could* happen (I note that Obama did not, of course, openly campaign for Childers), and that's heartening enough, but of course it needn't happen.

As far as the Obama 278 max I stand by that.  In other words I'm not buying Obama winning Florida, NC, Va, Mo stuff which flies around this board.  The 278 actually gives him Colorado, NM, Iowa, and Nevada along with the other Kerry states.  So no Brittain, my numbers didn't come out of my ass.

 
https://uselectionatlas.org/POLLS/PRESIDENT/2008/pollsa.php

Predicting he won't win any of those four states is, of course, entirely reasonable. Claiming he has "no reasonable shot" at any of them is getting a wee bit onto the hackish side (or the slightly deluded side if you actually believe it.)

[minionofmidas]

The problem wasn't Greg Davis connecting Obama to Childers (even though it obviously drove up black turnout).  Rather, the problem was Greg Davis not connecting one bit (and his opponent connecting big-time) with the NE MS population Lewis and I were yaking about above that is required in order to win the CD.  Trying to connect Obama to another candidate won't work in any situation if the voters don't want to vote for you in the first place.

Trying to connect Childers to the Obama and Pelosi and making them out as monstrous scarecrows made Davis look even more like a suburban partisan hack conservative. Which of course mightn't have happened if he wasn't a suburban partisan hack conservative.

[minionofmidas]

Made a stupid little calculation based on the figures in the thread above: (%Kerry - %Black)/ (1 - %Black). That is to say, an approximation of Kerry's *minimum* share of the white vote, by county.

Same thing, Musgrove vs Parker 1999.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

In Black-majority counties, Musgrove underperformed worse than Kerry, sometimes ridiculously so. This even goes for Hinds.
Of course, MS governor's races are held in off-years, so black turnout may have been quite low. Or maybe there's some hidden source for Black support of Mike Parker.
If that also holds elsewhere, all these figures are probably too low (cept in places like Tishomingo that don't really have blacks. But there aren't many of them.)


These are the counties from the earlier list: (Rounding-created ties broken by alphabet, not actual result order:)
Tishomingo 54
Alcorn 53
Prentiss 52
Benton 51
Itawamba 50
Tate 50
Tippah 48
Union 46
George 44
Lafayette 43
De Soto 42
Hancock 40
Monroe 40
Pearl River 36
Marshall 35
Lee 34
Pontotoc 34
Stone 34
Harrison 30
Jackson 26
Oktibbeha 22
Chickasaw 17 (what happened here!?)

On average, improvement on the Gulf is not quite as strong as in the Hills.



To be joined by the following places:

Yalobusha 36
Greene 35
Neshoba 31
Lamar 29
Perry 29
Webster 28
Calhoun 26
Jones 25
Smith 25
Wayne 25
Forrest 23
Grenada 21
Choctaw 20
Lawrence 19
Marion 19

and so on and so forth: 12 more counties over 10, 15 more counties over 0, but 17 counties below 0.

This extra list has a few counties bordering the Hill Country - although several of these are in the plains; Grenada is a white-majority Delta Country place - and a larger list of Pine Belt Counties just north of the Gulf Coast, which is especially remarkable as this is the area Parker is from (though his house district was mostly further to the west). And triracial Neshoba County right in between the two - maybe Musgrove had the Choctaw vote? (MS Choctaw may well be the largest reservation in the US to be won by Bush. Choctaws used to be dirt poor and isolated even by native American standards, but have been earning good money with Casinos recently. And are of course undergoing a population explosion. And are still a remarkably conservative group linguistically.)
 

[minionofmidas]

Well, first, Mike Parker was a Democrat before he switched parties (could be some residual support there).  Also, wasn't that CD a heavily black belt CD that included Jackson (or at least parts of it).

Yes, Parker's CD included most of the Jackson metro (although the missing bits were ultra-black bits), those black southwestern counties around Natchez, and the white counties east of that (including some listed here)... not sure how far east it went exactly.

[minionofmidas]

Lol, I totally overlooked one county in the additional list - Panola. Black Belt whites county between Tate and Yalobusha, of course. Musgrove got 55% of the white vote, his highest share anywhere... no surprise though as it's his home country.

[minionofmidas]

Completing the trifecta: 2003

Prentiss 42
Benton 40
Itawamba 40
Tishomingo 40
Hancock 38
Alcorn 35
George 35
Tippah 34
Union 31
Monroe 29
Harrison 29
Pearl River 27
Chickasaw 26
Greene 25
Panola 25
Pontotoc 25
Stone 25
Lafayette 24
Lawrence 24
De Soto 23
Lee 23
Jackson 22
Marshall 22
Yalobusha 22
Neshoba 21
Tate 20
Calhoun 18
Perry 18
Smith 17
Lincoln 16
Wayne 16
Jones 15
Oktibbeha 15
Webster 15

analysis to follow

[minionofmidas]

Obama will likely increase African American turnout, and African Americans will likely be a bit more Democratic than they typically are.

Kerry's percentages in the black belt are a fair bit better than those Musgrove off-year ones... not sure if there's much room for improvement for Obama there. There certainly is room for improvement for Musgrove here.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Aye.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

'deed so...

2000:
Total population: 61.4% White only, 36.3% Black only
under 18: 52.3% White only, 45.0% Black only
over 18: 64.8% White only, 33.1% Black only
18-29: 56.3% White only, 40.7% Black only
30-59: 64.9% White only, 33.0% Black only
60+: 73.8% White only, 25.1% Black only

That looks as if the state were getting blacker pretty fast... it isn't, really, though:
1990 35.6% Black, 1980 35.2% Black. Oh, and 1970 36.8% Black and before that always over 40% and for a hundred years up to and including 1930 over 50%.
Reason being that the massive imbalance is not caused simply by a black population explosion, but also by statistically significant lower life expectancy and by some elderly white immigration (to the coast and the Memphis burbs).
2007 Census estimate: 60.7% White only, 37.2% Black only, so the trend is accelerating a bit right now.