No chance for Democrats in MS-Sen.

Mississippi's Initiative 26 surged from certain passage to overwhelming defeat in a matter of about two weeks as voters soundly rejected conservatives' attempt to restrict abortion rights and birth control accessibility yesterday.  But unless Roger Wicker commits some atrocious crime or affront to the state's sensibility like this amendment posed, Democrats can't expect a similar turnaround in their quest to unseat the freshman senator next fall.

Wicker is a rather popular and inoffensive figure.  56% approve and 23% disapprove of his job performance, up from 51-23 when we last polled the state in March.  That ties him for the seventh-best-liked of 87 sitting senators we've polled on.  So not even a popular and moderate-to-conservative candidate with statewide or congressional experience can come close to toppling Wicker right now.  He doesn't match that +33 approval margin in any of the re-election horse races, but he leads any Democrat thrown at him by 13 to 26 points, up from 10 to 18 seven months ago.

Wicker’s closest matchup at this point would be against Attorney General Jim Hood, who was overwhelmingly re-elected yesterday. Wicker tops him by 13 points (52-39), making Hood the only of the five tested opponents who does even a point better than he did in March. Against the others, Wicker has gained. He tops former A.G. Mike Moore by 14 points (53-39), up four from March. Wicker leads former Rep. Gene Taylor by 21 (55-34), up nine. He also leads his 2008 opponent, former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, by 25 (58-33), up eight from March and 14 or 15 from three years ago. Finally, Wicker leads Rep. Travis Childers by 26 (56-30), up eight.

Wicker fails to match his approval margin because while 26% of Democrats approve of his work (which is actually down from 33% in March), only eight to 16% of them are voting for him. The Democrats actually do a better job at converting GOP disapproval into votes than he does Democratic approval into votes. Only 7% of Wicker’s party dislikes what he is doing in office, but 6-13% of them are pledging for the opposition. Wicker pads his leads by trumping the Democrats by margins of 12 to a whopping 42 points with independents.

A Democratic win in Mississippi would probably indicate an extraordinary wave or a highly flawed incumbent, and right now, neither Wicker nor the political environment suggest that.  This seat was probably never on any Democrat’s list of targets for next year anyway, even though a win here would be a welcome and surprising bulwark against the four seats Republicans have to net to pick up control of the Senate.  Democrats have 23 seats to defend, including several in tough, red-leaning territory, while the Republicans have only 10 on the ballot, most in safe Republican states like Mississippi, where true national Democrats are a dying breed.

Full results here

Comments

[jeff]

Wasn't this the same polling firm that predicted the measure initiative 26 would pass by a HUGE margin?

[Dustin Ingalls]

2 weeks ago for a private client, yes. Then our final poll over the weekend showed it winning only by one point. We had it getting 45%, and it got 43%. All the undecideds, which we showed were comprised mostly of African-Americans and other Democrats, moved against the amendment.

[Steve]

I would caution reading too much into the Personhood Amendment's defeat. I tend to think that it had more to do with poor wording and confusion surrounding the measure than suggesting that Mississipians don't oppose abortion.

[Dustin Ingalls]

The fact that before public ads and education on the initiative started it led almost 2:1 and then was defeated by double digits less than two weeks later shows that people actually understood exactly what the consequences of the measure would have been. They might oppose abortion (no one ever said otherwise), but they don't oppose it in all cases, and they don't oppose birth control, and they probably don't want women to be charged with murder for abortion.

[bihrno]

I was wondering, using the scale of "Safe Democrat", "Likely Democrat", "Leans Democrat", "Tossup", "Leans Republican", "Likely Republican", and "Safe Republican", where would you put each state's senate and presidential races on the scale, as of right now? Thanks

[jeff]

I love how people are trying to defend the polls on here when the polls were so clearly wrong about the Mississippi amendment by such a HUGE margin. It makes me wonder if the polls are no more than ways to try to get people to vote they want them to.

[Dustin Ingalls]

Yeah, we're a Democratic firm, so we're definitely trying to get people to vote Republican....