Mississippi Megathread 2023

[wbrocks67]

If only MS could have a Beshear situation. I know it's a heavy lift but man, Reeves is just awful.

[wbrocks67]

If Reeves ends up winning the primary, feels like Pressley could get close, but yeah, I feel like Hood's 2019 performance is basically the high water mark here. Would love to be wrong though!

[wbrocks67]

Tulchin Research has Pressley +4 over Reeves, 47-43

https://mississippitoday.org/2023/02/13/tate-reeves-brandon-presley-governor-welfare/

[wbrocks67]

This seems significant?

Siena polled MS's GOP Primary voters, and 21% of them said they would vote for Presley in the GE. Would that be enough?

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23846468/ms-todaysiena-governor-06-23.pdf

[wbrocks67]

Brandon Presley raised almost 6 million $ in the third quarter, a record for a MS Democrat:

https://desotocountynews.com/meet-the-candidates/presley-raises-5-6-million-in-third-quarter-breaks-fundraising-record/

I'm not sure he can win, but maybe it's gonna be closer than the polls say ...

Was coming in here to post this; here all this time I was thinking MS-GOV was gonna be another LA-GOV because of near zero investment from Dems, but given Presley's solid fundraising and DGA dropping $3.5M in the race, I wonder if this could be closer than we think.

[wbrocks67]

Interesting article on Presley's outreach to black voters, especially in light of the LA-GOV situation. Did Hood put this much effort into reaching black voters?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/17/us/politics/mississippi-governor-race-black-voters.html

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/AdImpact_Pol/status/1714726145852133872

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/MSTODAYnews/status/1716787255853908081?t=m5EIelGDpEWM28ljs7N...

[wbrocks67]

Re: "Anonymous Republican operatives"

Probably a tactic to get the RGA to spend some money.

RGA is already spending money

[wbrocks67]

Reeves does give Jon Corzine vibes. Sadly no third party candidate to skim off some iffy republican support.

MS has a runoff law, so a 3rd party would just send a close race into December.

I think it won’t be close in the end. This is a D internal, but I suspect even the regular polls are underestimating Rs in the Deep South due to black voters shifting fast. It could look like Oklahoma 2022, but at least Hofmeister actually led in some polls.

If there is somewhere they are not shifting, it is most definitely MS, especially with Reeves.

[wbrocks67]

Reeves does give Jon Corzine vibes. Sadly no third party candidate to skim off some iffy republican support.

MS has a runoff law, so a 3rd party would just send a close race into December.

I think it won’t be close in the end. This is a D internal, but I suspect even the regular polls are underestimating Rs in the Deep South due to black voters shifting fast. It could look like Oklahoma 2022, but at least Hofmeister actually led in some polls.

there is zero evidence whatsoever of this.

We saw this in Alabama/Mississippi/Louisiana/Georgia/North Carolina 2022 and Louisiana 2023. The result in a single state doesn’t mean much, but when the same pattern occurs in multiple states and multiple candidates and shows up in 2024 polling something is probably up.

Black voters voted more strongly for Warnock than they did for Biden 2020. Also, black turnout in a midterm to a presidential election is not really comparable. Lastly, again, 2022 polling showed the same thing and it did not bear out in actual results.

[wbrocks67]

To be fair, my understanding is that Mississippi is on its way towards becoming competitive. It may not be there yet but it will happen eventually.

I don’t think Reeves losing would be a sign of MS becoming competitive. The JBE/Pressley model (running a practising pro-life Christian who focuses exclusively on kitchen-table issues and contrasts himself with the out-of-touch incumbent and corrupt local administration) does not work at the national level.

It’s basically a Phil Scott/Charlie Baker-situation. The Deep South (except GA) is not getting any less Republican any time soon.

The KY and VA races have been far more nationalized.

Hood lost by 5-6 points, in an environment that was bluer and also before the Deep South trended hard right post-Dobbs. This won’t be close in the end.

What is your prediction for the final margin?

15-20, same as Trump’s 2020 margin. It seems bold but plausible given Louisiana. Trump will probably win MS by 25-30 in 2024.

Beshear is still clearly favored though.

There is quite literally no reason to compare it to LA other than its in the south. That's an incredibly lazy analysis that ignores pretty much every dyanmic of this race.

[wbrocks67]

The handwringing over Black voters here is a little misinformed - Shawn Wilson in Louisiana barely had a profile and spent very little with scant help from the DGA while Landry spent general election-levels of cash with real appeals to non-New Orleans Black voters. The Reeves/Presley spending and targeting dynamics are far more typical, though Presley is of course spending more than most MS Dems ever do.

This. I mean, this was the literal disparity - Dems basically spent nothing:

https://twitter.com/AdImpact_Pol/status/1712911917096841547

[wbrocks67]

Anyway, we're one-and-a-half weeks out from election day and I get the sense that the wind is blowing at Presley's back.  I suspect Reeves will finish under the 51.9% he got in 2019, still unclear whether that's enough to force a runoff or actually get Presley elected, though. 

Why do you feel that way? I'm not seeing or hearing any evidence of that.

I'm sticking with my prediction of Reeves winning by 8 or so (maybe 7 thanks to anti-vax deaths), which is still a good performance from a Mississippi Democrat, but I feel like there would be some kind of a buzz out there if Pressley were going to win. Nobody I interact with in real life seems to be even aware that a governor election is happening, at least no one is talking about it.

There has been; there's been numerous articles about it in the last few weeks, Presley has raised more, and Cook even moved it to Lean R. There's been plenty of buzz.

[wbrocks67]

Several GOP consultants share predictions about runoff between Tate Reeves, Brandon Presley
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/10/28/republican-operatives-governors-race-runoff/

‘They don’t trust Tate Reeves’: Radio host explains why conservative voters are struggling with governor’s race
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/10/30/tate-reeves-conservative-voter-struggles/

[wbrocks67]

Morning Consult's new Q3 ratings are out, and Reeves only has a 46/44 approval rating.

[wbrocks67]

Democrat consultants speak candidly about Presley's chances, strategy one week out from election day
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/10/31/brandon-presley-momentum-democrats-caution/

I didn't realize there hadn't been a debate yet. That should be interesting

[wbrocks67]

Wow, Presley outraised Reeves 3:1 in October, wild. Trump wading into to do a video endorsement also makes me think the whole "some GOPers not happy with Reeves" thing may be pretty true. This race will be interesting to watch on Tuesday.

[wbrocks67]

This is pretty great lol-

https://twitter.com/BrandonPresley/status/1719876354290676055

[wbrocks67]

Not sure if it's the hopium, but something in this race really seems to be shifting.

https://twitter.com/michbeyer/status/1720219923132072087

[wbrocks67]

It's happening?!  Beshear and Reeves both lose?

Remember, MS has practically no early voting at all, so whatever did go down in that debate, the news still has time to reach 95% of voters.  

From what I’m seeing MS mail-in turnout is 70% of 2019, similar to Louisiana. It is still unclear who the low turnout benefits.

Eh, LA does a lot of mail though, while MS doesn't, so not really a good comparison imo

[wbrocks67]

So I guess Mason Dixon and Siena are both just ignore this race till the very end. Sigh.

[wbrocks67]

Split Ticket's final rating: Likely R.

Hmm.. we'll see. Feels like they're edging on the side of caution because of the state's lean and no polling, which I get, but I feel like this race is definitely the most up in the air tomorrow. Likely R seems a bit too extreme.

[wbrocks67]

Looking at that write-up.... it feels extremely lazy just on the basis of facts.

Despite this shortcoming, Tate Reeves benefits from both incumbency and what appears to be an unmotivated Black electorate, as seen in 2022 midterm results and in neighboring Louisiana, where Black turnout was a shockingly-low 28.8%, while white turnout was a meager, but still significantly higher, 41.6%.

Not sure how LA is any way applicable here other than it is simply another southern state that just had an election. Other than that, there is no comparison in the two situations, and not even sure how 2022 is an apt comparison when Presley has made it a core mission to gin up black turnout here, which is outside of even what most competitive races did last year. Remains to be seen whether it's enough, but this is a very lazy comparison to make.

but Reeves continues to lead in public polling. This is the core of the argument that Reeves continues to be favored to retain his position: Presley has failed to close the gap in independent public polling.

Presley has failed to close the gap? There's barely been any public polling! The last public poll was literally a month ago!

I should've known this article was not written by Laksyha or the usual writers.

[wbrocks67]

FYSA, this past Saturday the number of requested absentee ballots surpassed 62,000.  That's ~30% more than the 48,000 from 2019.  56k have already been returned; mailed absentee ballots will be counted as long as they are postmarked by today and returned by November 15th.  6,000 potentially outstanding ballots after tonight could matter given Mississippi's new runoff rules for this year.     

What are the new runoff rules?

Just the typical 50+1