Mississippi Politics: Details of Election Results

My friend JQA sent along a link to this Jackson Clarion-Ledger article summarizing the results of the Mississippi Governor's election last week: Poll: Poor economy hurt Musgrove.

The post-election poll found that a fourth of the voters who had supported incumbent Democrat Ronnie Musgrove in 1999 deserted him this year. Perceptions among voters that the economy was doing poorly seemed to weigh heavily in Republican Haley Barbour's support.

However, it's not clear from the report to what extent that reflected the partisan slogans. Running against an incumbent Democrat, former Republican national chairman Barbour didn't hesitate to complain about economic hard times. While Musgrove legitimately took credit for attracting a large new Nissan plant to the state, which has built quite an impressive new facility north of Jackson. But, as the article notes, a number of plants have also shut down in the last two years in the state.

A high degree of racial polarization is nothing new in Mississippi politics. And that continued in this election:

Among voters in the exit poll, more than a third were black and
94 percent said they voted for Musgrove. Musgrove also bested Barbour among
women voters, 51 percent to 48 percent.

However, the turnout of blacks and women wasn't enough to
overwhelm the strong white (77 percent) and male (58 percent) for
Barbour.

Musgrove seemed to hold on to most registered Democrats, and Barbour did the same for Republicans.

It's hard to draw conclusions for other elections from this race. Economic times have been hard, and that tends to hurt incumbents. For all their verbal and symbolic shows of independence, Mississippi voters also like to know that their representatives have "clout in Washington," and Barbour's national Republican connections would be a good thing in that view. Sixty-one percent "thought if Barbour were elected, his experience in Washington would help Mississippi. Of that number, 82 percent said they voted for Barbour."