May 14, 2008
How Important is the GOP Loss in Mississippi-01?
As you probably know, the GOP just lost the special election in Mississippi's First Congressional District.
How bad is that? Well, it's bad.
First of all, as you probably realize, Mississippi is a DEEP RED state. This is a state that sent the buffoonish Trent Lott to the Senate last time by a margin of almost two-to-one in 2006. The state is so Republican that the Democrats didn't even bother to field an opponent against Sen. Thad Cochran in 2000. That's a damn RED state, y'all.
Mississippi has four congressional districts. Of these, two (CD-2 and CD-4) are considered reliably Democrat, while the other two (CD-1 and CD-3) are considered reliably Republican. Historically, CD-1 has been considered a "gimme" for the GOP. In 2002, the GOP candidate (Roger Wicker) outpolled the Democrat (Rex Weathers) by just a hair shy of THREE-TO-ONE (95,404 votes to 32,318.) In 2004, the Dems, still licking their wounds, didn't even field a candidate. In 2006, the Dems fielded another challenger (James K. Hurt,) who was beaten by almost two-to-one (95,098 votes to 49,174) in a year that was considered a pretty bad time to be a Republican.
In this special election, the Dems closed the gap. In fact, the race wasn't even particularly close. The Dems took this "safe Republican" seat by a margin of almost 8,000 votes (57,276 to 49,314.) Basically, the Democrat faithful showed up to vote, and the Republican "faithful" stayed home.
So, what happened in Mississippi-01? Does this represent some public groundswell of support for the Democrats? Doubtful. The Dems didn't get any more votes in this election than they got in 2000. I suspect these results do, however, reflect INTENSITY and ENTHUSIASM of their party faithful as compared to ours. This was a special election, which means turnout is generally lower and enthusiasm matters a great deal. Getting people out for a special election means getting people to take time out of their busy lives to go vote for ONE GUY. Most likely, these results mean that the Dems were able to get most of their 60,000-odd "party faithful" voters out to the polls, while the Republicans weren't able to get more than half of their ~95,000 to bother. I'd be willing to wager that most of the 95,000 voters that pulled the "R" lever in 2002 and 2006 are still generally "Republican". They just weren't "feeling it" enough to go to the polls on Tuesday.
This is not the end of the world. Anyone who's panicking at the loss of MS-01 needs to sit down and take a deep breath. That said, anyone who would shrug this loss off needs to think again. Barring massive incompetence on the GOP side, this seat will return to GOP hands come November, but there are some important lessons to be learned from this loss, and the GOP had better get to learnin' quick.
