Louisiana will have their own article before the date of their Governor’s runoff on November 16th, this article will look at the fairly red states of Mississippi and Kentucky as they vote for their respective Governors tomorrow, as well as the blueing state of Virginia where control of the closely divided General Assembly is on the line.

Many will try to assess the races tomorrow in terms of trying to find some portents for next year’s Presidential race, however with each of these states their partisan orientation is fairly established for next year’s race, (normal elections would see Virginia trending Democratic, the other two Republican), there may be some subtle trends below the surface that might point to dynamics that may loom larger in the year ahead. What follows is, in order of certainty, my predictions for tomorrow.

Mississippi – REPUBLICAN HOLD … the state has seen the one Democrat holding elected office, Attorney General Jim Hood, holding the current Lieutenant Governor, Republican Tate Reeves, to a single digit lead in the polls. This may or may not be enough to put Mr. Reeves over the crucial 50% mark. Mississippi is unique in having not only a majority vote requirement but also a majority of the state House Districts in order to become governor. However, unlike neighbouring Louisiana, where runoff elections are quite common, the state constitution provides that should no candidate win the necessary 50% of both votes and state House districts, that the State House will choose a winner. These ‘electoral college-like’ provisions have been controversial and have indeed only been used once, in 1999 when Democratic candidate Ronnie Musgroves won a close plurality (but not a majority) of the votes and was selected by the House on partisan lines. Twenty years ago, however, the Democrats had a strong 86-33 majority in the state House, currently the Republicans have a 74-45 majority and thus the outcome of a Reeves plurality would not be in any serious doubt.

The political dynamics of Mississippi are influenced by demographics, with whites, at 60% of the population, being heavily leaned towards the Republicans, while African Americans, at nearly 40% of the population, trend even more so towards the Democrats. Exit polls consistently show that in recent elections the racial/partisan breakdown as being typically 3 out of 4 whites backing Republicans, while 9 out of 10 African Americans back the Democrats. The end result has been that on the Presidential level, neither party’s support has fell significantly below 40% in the past 30 years, while in most years the same holds true to state wide races for Governor and Senate (except in some instances where popular incumbent Republicans have received a larger vote share). While Attorney General Hood may have some of that cross over appeal as a Democrat incumbent, it is unlikely to be enough to overpower a strong Republican advantage, even if that advantage seldom translates into a landslide.

As far as the overall result is concerned, Mississippi gubernatorial elections are generally not seen as harbingers of the following year’s national trend. At a more local level, however, some of the more affluent, more suburban counties such as Madison and Rankin in the Jackson, Mississippi area, Lamar (more rural but towards the coast) and northern DeSoto county by Memphis have trended slightly away from the Republicans in the last presidential election, even as the state trended slight more in the opposite direction. The Democrat candidate Hood carried none of these counties in his 2015 election for Attorney General, even as he won 55% of the statewide vote, however any discernible trend towards the Democrats in these counties could point to further evidence of suburban/college-educated voters’ discontent, even in the most conservative of states, with the Republican party.

VIRGINIA – likely Democrat gains in the General Assembly.

Unlike Canadian provinces, and UK national assemblies where elections are held separately, with campaigns held on clear partisan lines, state legislative politics is much harder to predict given the sheer volume of seats concurrently up for election in multiple states with very localized contests alongside races with more national import. For this reason, ericvotes currently does not make U.S. state legislature predictions.

It is another thing to argue, however, that it is futile to mention state legislative elections in a politics blog devoted to election predictions, especially as this year’s elections for Virginia’s General Assembly could be pivotal in future national trends.

At one point Virginia was a hold out among southern states as a Republican outlier, being the one southern state in 1976, for instance, that voted Republican even as the rest of the south voted for Jimmy Carter. Beginning in the late 1990s as northern Virginia continued to grow as part of the D.C. metro area, counties such as Fairfax started trending increasingly towards the Democrats, turning blue by 2004, and neighbouring Prince William following along in 2008. Since a good portion of the state’s population now resided in this part of the state, this contributed to an ongoing realignment of the state from red to blue. In 2016, Virginia was the only confederate state to vote for the Democratic Presidential ticket, completely opposite of the alignment 40 years prior.

Virginia and New Jersey each have their Governor’s election the year after the Presidential election, this year Virginia has General Assembly elections where currently the Republicans control the House of Delegates 51 to 48 and the Senate, 20 to 19. With a Democrat, Ralph Northam as Governor, even the slightest shift blue will give the Democrats a lock on the legislative and executive branches of state government, something that has not been the case in 25 years.

There promises to be closely fought races in all major population centers in the states, northern Virginia, Richmond and the Virginia Beach area, where both Democrats and Republicans are defending closely contested seats in both chambers. While many of the races may ultimately hing on local candidates and issues, the underlying dynamic is against the Republicans as President Donald Trump is not as popular in this southern state as elsewhere. This should be sufficient for the Democrats to pick up both legislative chambers.

Kentucky – Republican Hold – by a nose

I couldn’t find a closer horse race picture but that would accurately portray the race between incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin and Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear.

A mid-October Mason Dixon poll showed the race essentially tied, at 46% each. The Governor, originally from New Hampshire, is characterized as a stalwart partisan who is prone to making controversial statements, with one his detractors calling him ‘Scott Walker with Paul LePage’s mouth’. Kentucky has had a more genteel tradition of bipartisanship (at least in recent decades) with Democrats being historically very successful in Governor’s races even as the state has trended increasingly Republican. Governor Bevin is widely seen as unpopular, but has made it a point to tie himself closely with President Donald Trump, who is considerably more popular in the Bluegrass State. Bevin was seen by some educators as particularly hostile to public school teachers and their interests, and in many of the rural counties educators who might otherwise tend Republican are giving the Democrats another look. It is also worth noting that the Bevin campaign advertised a Lexington election eve rally featuring the President as far south as the Cookeville, TN radio market (where the Kentucky Governor election does not seem to have garnered a significant amount of attention, despite the frequent presence of Kentucky shoppers in the Upper Cumberland, Tennessee retail area.)

Attorney General Beshear, whose father Steve was a longtime fixture in state politics and recently served two terms as Governor himself, faces the challenge of either trying to regain traditional, more south eastern/rural sections of Democrat support or making new inroads in the more urban areas around Louisville, Lexington and south of Cincinnati. Twelve years prior when the elder Beshear handily won election over Republican incumbent Ernie Fletcher, most of the state map except for the mid-southern section near the Tennessee border was Democrat blue. Three years ago when Donald Trump won over 62% of the vote here, the only counties remaining blue where Fayette (Lexington) and Jefferson (Louisville), and many of the previous southeastern Democrat stronghold counties now had some of the darkest shades of red.

Recent electoral history in Alabama and Tennessee suggests that Democrat rural vote recapture is not a likely strategy for electoral success. While Alabama Democratic Senator Doug Jones did gain some votes in the northwestern section of the state (which were previously staunch Democratic counties) the underlying dynamic of his success was winning in any and all urban/suburban areas with no error to spare. The following year when former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, widely liked across partisan lines, ran for U.S. Senate himself, he kept Republican margins in the urban areas, (even Republican urban areas around Knoxville and Chattanooga) very tight, but the swing in many of the rural yellow dog counties was much weaker, even despite having won a full 95 county sweep for his second term as Governor only 12 years prior.

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Thus, in conclusion, Tuesday night will be closely watched for signs of the year to come, but absent any further rigorous analysis below the state aggregate level, it would be futile to try to predict next year’s election on the basis of two contests which historically have not helped predict the winner of the follow year’s presidential election.