Mississippi Miscellany

-One symptom of the losing ways of the Houston Nutt years at Ole Miss is that the Rebels have fallen to being only the third most popular college sports team in the state: 36% of voters say that Mississippi State is their favorite school to 27% for Southern Mississippi and only 21% for Mississippi. That decline in fan support in and of itself might prove that a change was badly needed.

-Ole Miss may get its mascot back though- 52% of voters say they would support a constitutional amendment to designate Colonel Reb as the school's official mascot to only 22% who say they would oppose such a move at this time. White voters with an opinion on the matter pretty universally support it, 62/14, and although black voters oppose it 19-46 that opposition is not as unanimous as the support from whites at this point.

-Mississippi is Braves Country. 38% of voters in the state say Atlanta is their favorite baseball team to 13% for the Cardinals. Everyone else is in single digits: 9% for the Cubs, 6% for the Yankees, 5% for the Red Sox and Rangers, and 2% for the Astros and Phillies. Mississippi's favorite football team is a blowout as well- the Saints win with 42% to 10% for the Cowboys, 8% each for the Packers and Colts, 6% for the Giants, 5% for the Titans and Falcons, and 0% for the Texans.

-We've repeatedly found that voters in Wisconsin don't much care for Brett Favre anymore but they still love him on the home front- 52% in Mississippi rate him positively to only 18% with an unfavorable opinion.

-Mississippi remains one of the most conservative states in the country when it comes to gay marriage: only 13% of voters think it should be legal to 78% who believe it should remain illegal. Even among Democrats there's only 19% support for it.  Most states we poll now at least have a majority in support of civil unions but that's not the case in Mississippi- 60% of voters are completely opposed to any sort of legal recognition for gay couples with just 38% supporting either gay marriage or civil unions.

-Earlier this year we found that only 40% of Republican voters in Mississippi thought inter racial marriage should be legal but we asked it again on this poll and found 52% support for it with GOP voters- still a surprisingly low number but progress.  Overall 60% of voters in the state support inter racial marriage to 23% who think it should be illegal.

-We've been asking about secession in a series of states recently: only 10% of Mississippi voters would like to leave the union. That's a lower level of support than the 14% we've found on Texas and Hawaii polls lately for their states striking out on their own.

-And finally we found that in a hypothetical match up between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Lincoln would win out 55-28.  That's largely because of Lincoln's overwhelming support from Democrats, 76-10. He only narrowly edges Davis with Republicans, 45-36, and the match up is actually a tie with independents at 44%. This question was a suggestion someone left on our blog.

Full results here

Comments

[Gerald]

The marriage results are endlessly fascinating, even when the outcome is a foregone conclusion. MS historically has been the most opposed and it turned in the most lopsided "yes" vote on its marriage amendment in 2004. That vote was 86%-14%.

Although no one would deny that the PPP results continue to show very strong opposition, you can see erosion even in MS. As in many other PPP polls in the South, you see erosion in opposition but not much increase in support. And you see very clear increases in support for civil unions, which strongly indicates those who formerly opposed all recognition have now adopted a view that is pro-civil unions and uncertain/uncommitted about full marriage.

So over 7 years, the 86% no vote has eroded by 8%, with those respondents moving to undecided rather than support. That is completely consistent with the trends in other hostile states that PPP has polled, such as South Carolina, Texas, and Missouri.

Although I am not aware of the civil union numbers back in 2004, I would feel confident in assuming that it was nowhere near 38%. The 38% number very likely follows the same trend seen in SC, TX, MO and other states, i.e., a significant increase in support.

Last observation: This poll affirms something that Nate Silver noticed. As support grows and opposition erodes, the pro-gay marriage trend accelerates. So a state that starts out extremely hostile will initially see only glacial movement. But as the trend continues and the support/oppose levels move closer, the pro-gay trend accelerates. If Silver's theory holds up, we should start seeing more rapid deterioration of opposition in states like ME and CA, where support/oppose was 47/53 and 48/52 in the last several years. (In that regard, I am eagerly awaiting your miscellany results for CA.)

For states like MS, it would seem to be 20 years away from such a tipping point, assuming present trends continue.

[Patrick Stuart]

I guess this confirms the suspicion that many of us have already accepted: that the old confederate crowd has about universally gone from Democratic to Republican.

Also, count me as sad that so many Republicans in the state are against interracial marriage (seriously, Mississippi?) - and young people more than old (unless that is statistical noise).