Why Democrats Keep Losing in Mississippi
Brandon Presley wasn't the "Mississippi Miracle" Democrats were promised because he didn't understand the barriers Black voters face when participating in state elections.
Topline Takeaways
Once again, a white moderate Democrat ran for the governor’s seat and lost due to his inability to register Black voters.
Throughout the duration of Presley’s campaign, the number of registered voters in White-majority counties went up while registered voters in Black-majority counties dropped.
While National Democrats poured money into the race, they failed to meaningfully engage with the on-the-ground realities and leaned on optimistic narratives rather than hard data.
Presley Fails to Register Black Voters En Masse
Democrats must juggle two priorities to win statewide office in Mississippi: turning out the state’s substantial Black voter base (proportionally, the largest in the nation) while also courting white moderates who sometimes vote Republican. Brandon Presley’s campaign was styled to accomplish the latter while many optimistic Democrats believed he could accomplish the former as well. He achieved his ambitious goal of visiting every single county in the state and many read this gesture as a sign that he was activating voters of all backgrounds. Unfortunately, a simple stump speech and handshake tour wasn’t going to cut it in a state that has historically disenfranchised Black voters.
Simply convincing voters to cast a ballot for Presley wasn’t enough, he needed to help Black residents overcome the barriers to getting registered to stand a chance against incumbent Governor Tate Reeves. Not only did Presley utterly fail to drive up registration numbers in majority Black counties where support for him was high, overall voter registration numbers dropped by nearly 1,000 between January 2023 and election day. While voter registrations in White-majority counties increased, this was offset by an even larger decrease in Black-majority counties as shown in the table above.
Mississippi’s Most Populous County Ran Out of Ballots
Issues of ballot access were on full display on election day as Hinds County, home to the state capital Jackson, ran out of ballots. Several precincts across the county did not have enough of the correct ballots on hand, forcing voters to wait in increasingly long lines into the evening. The problem prompted immediate legal filings that led a circuit court judge to order polling places stay open past their original closing time in order to allow voters to cast their ballots. While new ballots were eventually supplied to the precincts that needed them, voting rights activists worry about the amount of voters who simply gave up and went home without casting a vote.
-Debbie Pantenburg, spokesperson for the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Mississippi
Mississippi Needs More Than Just Money
Fundraising was the least of Brandon Presley’s concerns as he shattered historical fundraising records for a Mississippi Democratic gubernatorial candidate. He ultimately raised over $11 million, surpassing Reeves’ fundraising haul by roughly $2 million. Much of Presley’s cash on hand came from the Democratic Governors Association, proving that the national Democratic party was deeply invested in this race. This further bolstered Democratic optimism that Presley could beat one of the nation’s most unpopular sitting governors. But Democrats clearly didn’t see the writing on the wall as the all important voter registration totals were not trending in their favor.
This all underscores concerns that I voiced back when the race began: White moderates cannot hand-pick a White candidate, line their pockets with fundraising and expect them to turn out a win in the state. Mississippi needs focused attention on its disenfranchised population and that will only happen by picking a local politician who’s plugged in to the struggles of their constituency. As displayed above, Black voters simply can’t show up on election day and expect to have their voices heard, they need meaningful support to ensure that they’re able to register and cast their ballots just as easily as their white counterparts. Presley never showed that he could address, much less understand, the barriers present for the state’s Black Democrats, therefore he never really stood a chance at winning the state.
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