Mississippi, Part 1: The Southern Question

Mississippi remains stubbornly Republican, refusing to mirror fellow Sun Belt state Georgia’s blue shift, as demographic stagnation and cultural conservatism continue to shape its dynamics.

Mississippi & The Southern Question

In 2020, Georgia — a state in the Deep South — flipped to Democrats for the first time in 28 years. 

The last Democrat who won it was Bill Clinton in 1992. 

Now, Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia represented what many coined a transformation of the South, a region dominated by Republicans since the beginning on the 21st century.

Following this, one of the central questions that forecasters and all of us watching the election had in mind was, “If Georgia can turn blue, can the rest of the South do the same?” 

And in many ways, the answer to that question is, not really. 

No state better illustrates the complexities Democrats face in the South than Mississippi.

Mississippi: Opportunity or Non-Starter?

On the face of it, Mississippi would seem to represent a huge opportunity for Democrats, if only for one simple reason: just like Georgia, Mississippi has an extremely high proportion of Black residents.

In Georgia, Black Americans comprise around 33% of the total population; in Mississippi, this number is closer to 37%. 

Now, that’s just a huge proportion of the population, especially compared to the national average, where Black Americans make up around 13% of the population.

This is crucial, as Black voters overwhelmingly align with the Democratic Party. Nationally, around 84% of Black voters support Democrats.¹ And in Mississippi, Black voters cast an impressive 93% of their ballots for Joe Biden in 2020.

Given this level of support and Mississippi’s demographics, one might assume Democrats could have an even greater opportunity here than in Georgia.

But Mississippi is far more complicated for Democrats than one might assume.

Mississippi's White Vote

Democrats’ primary challenge in the Magnolia State lies with the state’s white voters.

Outside of its Black residents, Mississippi is overwhelmingly white, with little Hispanic, Asian, or Native American presence compared to states like Georgia or North Carolina.

In fact, Mississippi’s white voters are among the most consistently Republican in the country, even more so than those in other heavily Republican Southern states like Georgia, North Carolina, or South Carolina. According to 2020 exit polls, white voters in Mississippi supported Republicans at a higher rate than in any other state in the nation.

To put this in perspective: nationwide, white voters leaned Republican in 2020 by a margin of 57% to 43%. In New York, roughly half of white, non-Hispanic voters chose Democrats, while in states like Wyoming and the Dakotas, around two-thirds supported Republicans.

In Mississippi, however, the proportion of white voters backing Republicans that year was upwards of 82%.

And this racial voting pattern goes back decades. It traces back to 1964, the year that marked the Deep South’s transition from a Democratic stronghold to a Republican bastion.² That year, Mississippi voters supported Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act, with 87% of the vote. At the time, with only 10% of Black Mississippians registered to vote, the electorate was nearly all white.

Remarkably, that 87% Republican alignment from 1964 mirrors how white Mississippians vote today. Since the mid-20th century, Mississippi’s white voters have remained deeply aligned with the Republican Party, showing little shift toward Democrats. But why?

Mississippi: Influence of Evangelicals

A key factor in understanding Mississippi’s conservative white vote is the state’s strong Evangelical presence. In 2020, Evangelical Protestants made up 54% of Mississippi’s total vote, the highest percentage in the nation. Among them, white evangelicals voted Republican by a margin of 89% to 11%, translating to about 40% of the state’s overall electorate voting overwhelmingly Republican.

The Turnout Challenge: Mobilizing Mississippi’s Black Voters

Adding to Democratic challenges in Mississippi is the difficulty of consistently turning out Black voters. Barack Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012 were exceptions, as he generated unprecedented Black voter turnoutIn 2012, Black Mississippians made up 36% of the electorate, nearly matching their 37% share of the voting-age population³. And, in most of the majority-Black counties comprising the Mississippi Delta on the western border of the state, Obama won upwards of 70% of the total vote — reflecting his unprecedented strength among Black voters.

However, Obama’s high turnout levels have not been replicated before or since. In 2020—a year of historic turnout nationwide—Black Mississippians accounted for only 29% of the voting population, falling short of their 37% share of the state’s population.

Another complicating factor is the deeply religious nature of Mississippi’s Black population, with 67% identifying as Historically Black Protestants.⁴ Nationally, about 42% of this group opposes abortion, suggesting that a significant portion of Mississippi’s Black community may lean pro-life. While nationally, reproductive rights in the wake of the Dobbs ruling has driven up Democrat turnout, the same cannot be said for Mississippi. In the 2022 midterms, for example, turnout remained relatively low, and in MS-02, an overwhelmingly Black congressional district, popular incumbent Bennie Thompson still underperformed Biden’s margin by 10 points.

Historical Context: The Deep South’s Conservative Roots

Looking beyond partisan labels, the Deep South—even before its shift to solidly Republican in 1964—has historically been the most conservative region in the United States. The political dynamics here are inseparable from the South’s troubled past, rooted in slavery and a legacy of racial violence and segregation.⁵

Until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Mississippi and much of the South largely favored Democrats. However, the Democratic Party of that era was fundamentally different from today, with most Southern Democrats supporting and upholding segregation. Meanwhile, the Republican Party—the party of Lincoln and Reconstruction—was more progressive on civil rights issues.⁶ 

But the 1964 election marked a major turning point. When President Lyndon B. Johnson championed civil rights and the Democratic Party cemented its identity as a liberal coalition, the Deep South swiftly abandoned its Democratic ties and pivoted rapidly — and overwhelmingly — towards the Republicans.

Georgia and Mississippi: Pre and Post 1964 Trajectories

Returning to the comparison of Georgia and Mississippi: before 1964, both states were reliably Democratic. In the pivotal 1964 election, both states supported Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act.

Throughout the 20th century, Democrats in both states saw a decline, and save a couple of outliers (in 1972 when Jimmy Carter won Georgia by 33.8% and Mississippi by 1.9%, and in 1992, when Bill Clinton won Georgia by 0.6%, but George W. Bush won Mississippi by 8.9%), Republican presidential nominees would see victory in most future contests in both states.

By the turn of the century, both states’ Democratic parties had become shadows of their former selves — and by 2004, Republicans controlled both states’ governor’s offices and Senate seats for the first time since Reconstruction.

However, from the 2000s onward, the political paths of Georgia and Mississippi began to diverge.

Continue to Mississippi, Part 2:

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-race-ethnicity-and-education/

2. In 1960, all 22 U.S. Senators from the South were affiliated with the Democratic Party. Today, all but three are Republican.[i] For decades, historians and other researchers have debated what drove the exodus of white Southern voters from the Democratic Party.

3. https://mississippitoday.org/2020/10/29/itll-be-higher-than-obama-mike-espy-will-benefit-from-record-black-voter-turnout-in-mississippi/

4. https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/state/mississippi/racial-and-ethnic-composition/black/

5. https://www.library.msstate.edu/mpc/mississippi-republican-party

6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8250541/