2018 United States Senate special election in Mississippi


The 2018 United States Senate special election in Mississippi took place on November 6, 2018, to elect a United States Senator from Mississippi. The election was held to fill the seat vacated by Senator Thad Cochran when he resigned from the Senate, effective April 1, 2018, due to health concerns. Republican governor Phil Bryant appointed Cindy Hyde-Smith to fill the vacancy created by Cochran's resignation. Hyde-Smith sought election to serve the balance of Cochran's term, which expires in January 2021.
On November 6, per Mississippi law, a nonpartisan top-two special general election took place on the same day as the regularly scheduled U.S. Senate election for the seat currently held by Roger Wicker. Party affiliations were not printed on the ballot.
Because no candidate gained a simple majority of the vote, a runoff between the top two candidates, Cindy Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy, was held on November 27, 2018, in which Hyde-Smith defeated Espy. Despite her reasonable margin of victory, Hyde-Smith significantly under-performed the states's partisan lean, as well as the 20-point margin of victory of Roger Wicker in his senatorial election, held concurrently with the first round of the special election in which the combined GOP candidates won 58% to the combined Dem total of 42%. Espy's 46.4% of the vote is the best Democratic performance in a Mississippi senate election since the 1982 election.
The victory made Hyde-Smith the first woman ever elected to the United States Congress from Mississippi.

Candidates

Endorsements

Fundraising

Polling

Results

Runoff

During the run-off campaign, while appearing with cattle rancher Colin Hutchinson in Tupelo, Mississippi, Hyde-Smith said, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be in the front row." Hyde-Smith's comment immediately drew harsh criticism, given Mississippi's notorious history of lynchings of African-Americans. In response to the criticism, Hyde-Smith downplayed her comment as "an exaggerated expression of regard" and characterized the backlash as "ridiculous."
Hyde-Smith joined Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant at a news conference in Jackson, Mississippi on November 12, 2018, where she was asked repeatedly about her comment by reporters. In the footage, Hyde-Smith adamantly refused to provide any substantive answer to reporters' questions, responding on five occasions with variations of, "I put out a statement yesterday, and that's all I'm gonna say about it." When reporters redirected questions to Bryant, he defended Hyde-Smith's comment, and changed the subject to abortion, saying he was "confused about where the outrage is at about 20 million African American children that have been aborted."
On November 15, 2018, Hyde-Smith appeared in a video clip saying that it would be "a great idea" to make it more difficult for liberals to vote. Her campaign stated that Hyde-Smith was making an obvious joke, and the video was selectively edited. Both this and the "public hanging" video were released by Lamar White Jr., a Louisiana blogger and journalist. Attention was also drawn to photographs, posted on Facebook four years earlier, of Hyde-Smith and her husband visiting former Confederate President Jefferson Davis' home, now an historical site. The photos show her wearing a Confederate hat and posing with a rifle commonly used by Confederate soldiers.

Predictions

Polling

Hypothetical polling-------

;with Chris McDaniel and Mike Espy

Results

OWIKI.org. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.