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Washington (AFP) – The last round of US mid-term elections could happen in Mississippi, where a Senate race that should have been an easy win for Donald Trump's party is about to end with a second turn, after multiple difficulties on the part of the outgoing president.
The president relies on the Republican stronghold in the Great South, where political battles are rarely on the national radar, to give him a break with his majority in the Senate, which has 100 members.
Runoff is becoming more important for Trump. On election night, he could have said that his Republicans were holding up, while the Democrats were winning in the House.
But as the results were compiled in the weeks that followed, the Democrats seem to have won about 40 seats in the House, their biggest victory in decades, and managed to stay in the Senate despite an unfavorable electoral map.
Conscious that Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith may be a victim of the November 27th runoff, Trump scheduled rallies on election night in two Mississippi cities, in a state Trump won by almost 18 percentage points in 2016.
The tight race in the Senate against Republicans in Florida helped improve Trump's story. If the party retains the Mississippi, the Republicans will expand their weak pre-election majority from 51-49 to 53-47.
But from nowhere, Mississippi may be at stake thanks to Hyde-Smith, who was named this year to fill a vacancy but stumbled on the path of the election campaign in recent weeks.
In hiring a supporter, Hyde-Smith said that she would be "in the front row" when he invited her to attend a "public hanging".
Many have bridled to the comment, too aware that the Mississippi had lynched more African-Americans than any other state.
A few days later, she told a small crowd that the laws that "make it a bit more difficult" for some Liberal students to vote are "a great idea."
Hyde-Smith, 59, said his lynching remark was an "expression of exaggerated respect" and that his line of repression of voters was a joke.
But his gaffes clearly upset the campaign.
"She is really trying to make this race a race," Professor John Bruce, chairman of the University of Mississippi's Department of Political Science, told AFP.
If Democratic challenger Mike Espy, a former Congressman and first African-American to represent Mississippi in Washington for more than a century, manages to oust Hyde-Smith, "it will be a reversal of status seen" for decades Bruce added.
– Galvanizing Democrats –
The senator made history herself as the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress.
But his failed comments galvanize the Democrats. Mississippi is black at 37%, the highest percentage of any US, and his remarks have been an affront to African Americans.
Electoral patterns in this state have largely followed party trends in recent decades, and Democratic candidates are often given a support ceiling of about 44 percent, according to Bruce.
Trump's approval ratings are down, but he remains popular in Mississippi.
The high turnout of black voters being the only likely way to win Espy's victory, he appealed to prominent motivators.
US Senator Kamala Harris campaigned for Espy over the weekend, while Senator Cory Booker started following him on Monday. Both are African-American senators considered as potential candidates for the Democratic presidency in 2020.
The Mississippi Senate race is about to end because none of the four candidates received more than 50% of the votes on polling day.
Hyde-Smith divides the Republican vote with a far-right conservative whose supporters are likely to consolidate behind Hyde-Smith.
Espy, 64, insisted on unifying voters. He is committed to working for the maintenance of the US Health Act that protects people with pre-existing illnesses.
Espy and his supporters can turn to neighboring Alabama, where Democrat Doug Jones stunned the political world last December by beating a conservative Republican.
They can also inspire California's Orange County.
The area outside of Los Angeles has been a conservative bulwark for decades. But, in part due to demographic changes, Democrats swept the seven congressional races in the county this month, leaving him without a Republican representative in Congress.
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