2018 Mississippi Senate Special Election - Open Primary

9/13/18 -- This race is slow to take shape. Democrats probably nominated their second-most electable candidate in Mike Espy.  But we won’t really know how competitive it is until Election Day, when an open primary for this particular race will be held.  If conservative firebrand Chris McDaniel advances against Espy, this could be competitive, but if control of the Senate is in the balance, it is difficult to see a path to victory for the Democrat.

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Less than 100 years ago, Mississippi was one of the most Democratic states in the country.  In 1936, Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon received a pitiful 3 percent of the vote there; indeed no Republican received more than 20 percent of the vote in Mississippi from 1892 through 1948 (when Tom Dewey again received 3 percent).  From 1903 through 1971, the state failed to elect a single Republican state legislator.  Obviously those days have long since passed, and the state is reliably Republican today.  The state Senate is controlled by the GOP, three of the four House seats are Republican, and both Senate seats elect Republicans.  For the first time since Reconstruction, the state House of Representatives is also controlled by Republicans.