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However, even though her statements and her actions may make Tuesday's special election in the Senate an affair closer to what she might have been otherwise, make no mistake: she's a big favorite against Democrat Mike Espy.
Mississippi is as red as they come. He has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976. The last Senate-elected Democrat was John Stennis in 1982. The last democratically elected governor was Ronnie Musgrove in 1999.
The Mississippi redness showed no signs of shortness of breath when voters went to the polls earlier this month. Republicans Hyde-Smith and Chris McDaniel won 58 percent of the vote in primary, while Democrats Tobey Bartee and Espy won 42 percent. That does not sound very different from Republican President Donald Trump's 18-point win in 2016 in the state.
It should not be too surprising that there has not been much movement compared to 2016. The Mississippi Democrats seem to have a low ceiling for Senate elections. No Democrat has approached more than 8 points of a Republican over the past 30 years. Only two Democrats are single digits.
The inability of Democrats to come closer is largely explained by the fact that they can not convince white voters of the state. Mississippi voters are strongly polarized along racial lines. According to the 2018 ballot poll, Bartee and Espy combined only got 16% of the white vote in the first round of the special election. They took 94% of the black vote.
The problem for Democrats is that this is a trend that is repeated over and over again. Voters do not change so much in the state. In the closest Senate race of the past 20 years, Musgrove earned 18% of the white vote and 92% of the black vote in the 2008 special senate election. He lost 10 points in total.
In other words, Espy has to break the mold in one way or another. It can, for example, win more white voters than the traditional Mississippi Democrat. Even if you assume that Hyde-Smith's recent comments allow Espy to capture 98% of the black vote, he will have to win 22% of the votes cast by the whites to the north in order to win in the face of the traditional rate of participation.
There is not much sign that will happen. After allocating proportionately undecided, Espy represents on average only 16% to 17% of the votes cast in white in the polls for the second round.
Speaking of this survey, it was limited but consistent. Hyde-Smith averages a double-digit lead.
Yet, there just have not been so many polls. Only one public survey was conducted and published during the last 21 days of the campaign. (More polls had been done previously.) Based on Senate elections since 1998, the true margin of error (ie, a 95% confidence interval) is +/- 13 percentage points. each survey during this last 21-day period. This means that this race is technically in the margin of error.
We are also talking about a special election on Tuesday after Thanksgiving. This is not the type of election that most pollsters usually engage in, nor elections for which there are many historical precedents. The impossibility of drawing on past elections is the reason why special elections in the Senate have always been less precise than in other Senate elections.
Indeed, Espy's best hope is that participation patterns change in the first round. There is a precedent for that. The percentage of African-American voters in the electorate increased between the first round and the second round of the last two rounds of mid-term Senate in Louisiana. We have also seen
a peak of black participation the special election in the Alabama Senate last year, which did not take place on polling day. Due to highly polarized Mississippi electoral patterns, Hyde-Smith's margin decreases by more than one point for every additional percentage of voters' black electoral makeup.
Of course, it's still Mississippi. Espy will have to win a much higher percentage of white voters than the first round, even though turnout rates change. I am not aware of any survey, public or private, suggesting that it is likely.
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