Mississippi Senate Upset?

[mystery-ak]

Mississippi Senate Upset?

    David Byler

 November 20, 2018 at 9:34 PM
Election Day is still here, people!

Mississippi’s special Senate election was supposed to be a post-election snooze-fest. Mississippi is one of the most reliably Republican states and even if Republicans somehow found a way to blow it, the GOP was going to maintain the Senate majority anyway.

But, weirdly enough, Republicans are starting to worry about this race. Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (who was appointed to the seat earlier this year) recently said that she complimented a supporter by saying “if he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row”—which isn’t good in any context, but especially not in a state with a history of lynching. And she has now followed that up with a couple more rough news cycles. Hyde-Smith is running against Mike Espy, a former Agriculture secretary and Mississippi congressman and probably one of the best candidates Democrats had in Mississippi.

So should Republicans be worried? Is Hyde-Smith in trouble?

To get a handle on this question I’m going to talk through (1) what type of a red state Mississippi is; (2) what an upset or narrow win would look like demographically; and (3) how likely an Espy win is.

more
https://www.weeklystandard.com/david-byler/could-mike-espy-shock-cindy-hyde-smith-in-a-mississippi-senate-upset

[Fishrrman]

If you go to the source article, and view the graphic, keep in mind that the blue areas are very much a part of the "black belt" of the South.

Look at the blue area below: