If Thad Cochran is too sick to run for reelection in 2018, is Mississippis senate seat in play

In the presidential election of 2016 Trump won Alabama 62-34. Mississippi was 58-40.

The margins in the Mississippi 2012 presidential election were even smaller, 55-44.

Granted, Moore had a ton of flaws. But the margins are smaller in Mississippi.

The reason I’m using presidential year info it turnout. During a presidential year the gop candidate for senate on MS got about 700k votes vs 500k for the democrat.

In a midterm, the gop candidate got about 379k vs 240k for the democrat (this is 2012 and 2014).

But turnout for the democratic candidate in Alabama was only 10% lower than a presidental year. turnout for the gop candidate was 50% lower than a president year. My impression is that so far, turnout for democrats in special elections is closer to presidential year turnout. Turnout for the gop is closer to midterm turnout. Jones got maybe 10% fewer votes Than Clinton in 2016. Moore got 50% fewer votes than Trump. But again, Moore was a weak candidate.

I’m wondering if both sides will get 400-500k votes, making it a toss up. If Cochran is sick and the gop elect another authoritarian extremist that may make the race even more competitive, especially if the democrats put up a good candidate.

I don’t see Mississippi being in play. You could look at Louisiana, but Louisiana politics are strange and different, with a traditionally strong and die-hard Democratic party that still makes room for the occasional Blue Dog. In the future -maybe not in 2018 but beyond - I think Georgia is much more interesting. Arizona might be a state to watch too.

To clarify, Senator Cochran’s seat is not up for reelection until 2020. However, as I understand Mississippi laws, if he were to step down next year due to illness then there would indeed be a special election in 2018 to fill the remainder of his term.

Alabama has a lot more urban areas . . .Jackson and Birmingham are not equivalent. Alabama is Georgia without Atlanta. Mississippi is Alabama without Birmingham, Mivile, Montgomery, or Huntsville, all of which are bigger than Jackson.

The only way a Democrat wins Mississippi is a conservative black pro-life candidate who mobilizes the hell out of the black vote, an institutional failure to repress that vote, and a horribly problematic Republican candidate.

I got Cochran and wicker confused. Wicker is up for reelection in 2018.

As far as people saying Mississippi is harder than Alabama, my impression is it is the opposite. In the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won Alabama by 28 points. He won Mississippi by 18 points. The issue is not urban vs rural, but black vs white. Alabama is 26% black, Mississippi is around 40% black. If black turnout is up and white turnout is down, then 45% of the electorate in 2018 could be black.

Which means the democrats start from a smaller hole. And if turnout is high on the Dem side and low on the gop side, and if there is a special election and the gop nominates a horrible candidate then it could be in play.

Mississippi Doper here. I’d say that it’s very unlikely, but it may happen if Cochran steps down or Wicker gets primaried, and the Republican nominee ends up being Chris McDaniel, who is our version of Roy Moore. (I don’t know of any McDaniel-related sex scandals, but it’s quite plausible that he has some that we don’t know about yet, and he is a terrible, terrible person who got one of his minions to break into a nursing home and take unauthorized photos of Cochran’s wife, who was a dementia patient, the last time he tried to run for Senate. He also picks fights with constituents on social media and generally tries to out-Trump Trump, which isn’t really a persona that plays well with the majority of voters here.)

The demographics are tough. Mississippi is roughly 40% minority, but the white vote is very inelastic, without the big population of college-educated suburban professionals that have turned other southern states purple. Young people have a tendency to leave after they’ve completed their educations, and I can’t blame them. While there have not been the sort of DMV-closing shenanigans we saw in Alabama, MS does have voter ID laws, as well as some other structural barriers to voting (it’s very difficult to access accurate information about voting and registration online, for example, and also to vote absentee).

That said, there is a major grass-roots push going on right now to get people registered to vote (nonpartisan, but particularly focused on college students and African-Americans), and just based on what I’m seeing on the ground, there is a LOT more liberal and progressive activism going on than there was prior to the 2016 elections, when the general attitude tended to be “well, we can’t do anything about Mississippi, so we’ll just let the rest of the country save us from ourselves.” Once it becomes clear no one else is going to save you, you focus on Mississippi.

At the moment, there are serious Democratic challengers in two of the state’s three Republican-majority Congressional districts, which should help somewhat with races higher up on the ballot, but what we don’t have is a strong challenger for the Senate seat. (Jensen Bohren, the only person who has filed on the Democratic side so far, is basically a far-left fringe candidate, and I doubt he’s got the political skills or the funding to mount a serious campaign.) So, basically, we’d need a candidate AND several lucky breaks.

I’ve posted it in other threads so I won’t duplicate it here unless requested, but yes Mississippi is in play in 2018. Sort of.

The path to a Dem senate takeover in 2018 consists of first holding all Dem seats in play which won’t be easy with MT, ND, and WV in the mix. Then they also have to flip two seats. The most likely targets are AZ and NV.

If any of those races look to be in doubt they will have to pursue other options. The next two ‘easiest’ targets by Cook PVI are TX and… Mississippi.

I would be shocked if the Democratic Party did not at least treat the 2018 MS senate race as an opportunity to flip a seat.

Of course the political winds could be blowing differently 11 months from now so that could change.

Looking into this a little deeper it appears the Dems may even have a pretty high quality candidate to run: Ray Mabus.

Are there any hints that he is considering a run for office?

He’s mentioned, somewhat unfavorably, at the end of this article: Wicker preps re-elect.

And there’s this from a little over a week ago…

Elvis’s cousin may run for this senate seat as a Dem. For real.

He’s a lot more than just “Elvis’s cousin”. He’s a long term Public Service Commissioner for a district that covers a third of the state with a solid record of fighting for the people against utilities and telemarketers. The name recognition will help, if he chooses to run.

Also—Wicker has a few skeletons in his closet that may come out if McDaniel runs in the primary. That will be a nasty fight and could open the door for a guy like Brandon Presley.

The donkey in the room, so to speak, is money. It will take serious money from the national party, and they generally don’t give much to Mississippi candidates.

Highly unlikely, but not wholly impossible.

Tell me who’s running.

Does it have to be a child molester or would an atheist do?

Chris McDaniel to challenge Sen. Roger Wicker in Mississippi Republican primary

As Fretful Porpentine pointed out, this guy fights dirty.

It still looks nearly impossible for team D, but this could be the crack in the dam.

Also, Elvis’s cousin dropped out.

We need a candidate. Desperately. The filing deadline is in three days.

Is Jensen Bohren not doing it for you?

I don’t know sweet fuck all about Mississippi, but this guy seems less than100% serious.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer Senate candidates who do not say openly that the reason they’re running is that they couldn’t get a job.

And … Internet rumor has it that we have a credible candidate! (David Baria, current minority leader in the state House.) Fingers crossed it’s true!