Cochran vs McDaniel: The Primary

The Primary

So obviously my first substantive post needs to address the elephant that trampled through the proverbial room earlier this summer; Senator Thad Cochran's surprising upset of State Senator Chris McDaniel in the Republican primary runoff election.

Here is the geograpic breakdown of the votes from the first round of voting. Source for maps here. (Cochran shown in blue, McDaniel in red)

As you can see, McDaniel did best in his home base in the Pine Belt region. Were it not for his gaudy totals here, this election would not have been close and the incumbent would have cruised to another reelection. The converse is also true, had Senator Cochran not performed so well in his base, Hinds County, the Delta, and the North MS Hill Country, this race would have gone to the upstart. They battled to a near draw. This map however is incomplete, it is only a rough tool for understanding the electorate. Rankin County is a high population county, but the candidates battled out nearly to a draw there, so Mr. Cochran's victory there is less indicative of his real performance.

When we add gradient to look at competitive vs non-competitive counties, a clearer picture of both candidate's bases develops, and this is more telling.  I put the cut off for a "competitive county" at 55%, it is an arbitrary line, but any line I draw will be necessarily arbitrary so that's just the line I picked. So much digital ink has been spilled regarding what both candidates represent for the modern GOP that it is hardly worth me retreading, but I shall sum it up anyway; the septugenarian Cochran represents the collegiality and "practical conservatism" that once marked the Senate as a governing body, and the upstart McDaniel represents the "tea party" whose ideals include more fiscal austerity, a sharp reduction in government, and all that stuff.

What we see here are each candidate's bases. Mr. McDaniel's base in the Pine Belt stands out again, while Mr. Cochran's victories in the small counties in the north central region become less impressive. What becomes more impressive however, is Mr. Cochran's total dominance in the voting in the Delta, Jackson (and its northern, but not eastern suburbs), and the "black prarie" through the eastern portion of the state; from Noxubee County up to Prentiss, and extending over to the home of Mr. Cochran's alma mater in Lafayette County. The only counties where Mr. McDaniel won a convincing majority outside of his home turf was in the Memphis suburbs of DeSoto, Tate, and Marshall Counties.

Another thing to notice, and will become important in the runoff maps, is that Mr. Cochran won the majority of counties where it was competitive 23-11. But again, due to McDaniel's big lead in the Pine Belt and Memphis 'burbs, this one went to another round.

The Runoff

Two weeks later, voters returned to the polls. Again the vote was competitive but this time the incumbent prevailed. The same gradient map shown above applied to the election does not do it justice. An uninformed reader of the map below would believe that surely McDaniel won the runoff, after all, he flipped or solidified his leads in several competitive counties.

As you can see, Mr. Cochran's narrow lead in Panola County gave way to a McDaniel route, McDaniel also took slight leads in Scott and Newton Counties in the Pine Belt adjacent East Central MS region. Mr. McDaniel also expanded his reach into the North MS Hills region by taking commandig leads in Tippah and Benton Counties

The counties where Senator Cochran helped his cause the most were in the majority African American river counties. He solidified his leads in Warren and Adams counties, as well as the off-river Simpson and Lincoln counties.

The map at left shows you though, that often untold in the news stories about the runoff, is that rural white Republicans were trending towards Mr. McDaniel. That is an important thing to remember. Competitive counties in the runoff election split 14-14. Mississippi's rural white voters seem more attracted now to Mr. McDaniel's ideology than they did even two weeks before this contest. The next statewide primary will be very interesting to watch. I would not be surprised if a Chris McDaniel loyalist prevails in the next Gubernatorial race, I highly doubt the crossover votes will happen with any sort of regularity.

The main thrust that kept Mr. Cochran in Washington was his increase in support from black voters, who McDaniel supporters will hasten to inform you, tend to vote Democratic.

The hows and whys of partisan-racial polarization is a rich topic that I intend to explore more in future updates, but suffice it to say that in Mississippi, Democrats tend to be black people and Republicans tend to be white people. Indeed, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, named Mississippi the most politically inelastic (a fancy word meaning rigidly polarized) state in the union. If the Mississippi Republican runoff had been confined to "Traditional Republicans"(white people), then Mr. McDaniel would be readying his victory speech for November right now. But because Mississippi has open primaries, those black Democrats were able to cross over and vote for the percieved "less conservative" Cochran.

There has been a storm of moralizing on the right about these crossover votes. Some say that the votes from those who don't "intend to vote GOP come November should be barred from voting in the runoff" (a ridiculous and unenforceable proposition), and yet more wring their moral hands and decry Senator Cochran's "exploitation" of the black vote. These people who see themselves as the vanguard against African American exploitation seem not to consider that black people simply voted for their preference, no something more sinister must surely be at play. But unless the McDaniel camp can prove in a court of law that these votes were illegitimate, then this election seems over.

It is the height of irony that a man who once explained his voting in Democratic primaries as attemptes to vote for the less liberal candidate is now decrying liberal Democrats crossing over to vote for the less conservative option in the Republican primary. And it is unfortunate yet predictable that he would blame Democrats for "stealing the election".

This is another instance in a long line of right wing politicians and idealogues who see black and liberal votes as illegitimate, as being bought. How many far right politicians have decried liberal preferences as solely the result of receiving kickbacks from the government? (Mitt Romney, anyone?) Though the right wing blogosphere will no doubt parrot accusations of vote buying from the Cochran camp, the fact remains that this is unlikely to hold up in a court of law, and Mr. Cochran will remain the US Senator from Mississippi barring an unlikely upset from former US Rep. Travis Childers.