Mississippi

Mississippi's major political parties are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, each an affiliate of the national party organization, but the Republicans are weak below the national level. Mississippi Democrats have often been at odds with each other and with the national Democratic Party. In the 1830s, party affiliation in the state began to divide along regional and economic lines: woodsmen and small farmers in eastern Mississippi became staunch Jacksonian Democrats, while the conservative planters in the western river counties tended to be Whigs. An early demonstration of the power of the Democrats was the movement of the state capital from Natchez in 1821 to a new city named after Andrew Jackson. During the pre-Civil War years, the secessionists were largely Democrats; the Unionists, western Whigs.

During Reconstruction, Mississippi had its first Republican governor. After the Democrats returned to power in 1875, they systematically deprived blacks of the right to vote, specifically by inserting into the constitution of 1890 a literacy clause that could be selectively interpreted to include illiterate whites but exclude blacks. A poll tax and convoluted residency requirements also

Mississippi Presidential Vote by Political Parties, 1948–2000

Mississippi Presidential Vote by Political Parties, 1948–2000

restricted the electorate. Voter registration among blacks fell from 130,607 in 1880 to 16,234 by 1896.

In 1948, Mississippi Democrats seceded from the national party over the platform, which opposed racial discrimination. That November, Mississippi voters backed the States' Rights Democratic (Dixiecrat) presidential ticket. At the national Democratic convention in 1964, the black separatist Freedom Democratic Party asked to be allotted 40% of Mississippi's seats but was turned down. A further division in the party occurred during the 1960s between the (black) Loyalist Democrats and the (white) Regular Democrats, who were finally reunited in 1976. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the segregationist White Citizens' Councils were so widespread and influential in the state as to rival the major parties in political importance.

Since the passing of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, black Mississippians have registered and voted in substantial numbers. According to estimates by the Voter Education Project, only 5% of voting-age blacks were registered in 1960; by 1992, 23% were registered.

Mississippi was one of the most closely contested states in the South during the 1976 presidential election, and that again proved to be the case in 1980, when Ronald Reagan edged Jimmy Carter by a plurality of fewer than 12,000 votes. In 1984, however, Reagan won the state by a landslide, polling 62% of the vote. In the 2000 election, Republican George W. Bush won 57% of the vote; Democrat Al Gore received 42%; and Independent Ralph Nader garnered 1%. In 2002 there were 1,754,560 registered voters; there is no party registration in the state. The state had seven electoral votes in the 2000 presidential election.

Elected in 1991, Mississippi's governor Kirk Fordice was the first Republican governor since Reconstruction. But a Democrat soon regained the office: David Ronald Musgrove was elected governor in 1999. Following the 2002 elections, the state's two US senators were Republicans Trent Lott and Thad Cochran. Lott became majority leader of the Senate in 1996 following the departure of Bob Dole (R-Kansas); he stepped down from that post in December 2002 following controversy over remarks he made praising former South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist campaign for the presidency . All five of Mississippi's US representatives were Democrats until the 1994 midterm elections when Republican Roger Wicker won a House seat that had been in Democratic hands since Reconstruction. Following the 2002 elections, the House delegation comprised two Democrats and two Republicans. Before November 2003 elections, the state senate comprised 33 Democrats, 18 Republicans, and one vacancy; the state house had 86 Democrats, 35 Republicans, and three Independents.