where you had a uniquely flawed candidate in roy moore that you cannot transfer what happened in alabama to mississippi and you cannot win simply by ginning up the african-american base. the third factor has to be the crossover votes, the suburban educated voters and that block really wasn t there. well, true. i think some people were comparing it to alabama. but i think folks knew that he had a hard road ahead of him, that this was a long shot. but given the demographics of the state, they are the majority. that s not right or left. that s just right or wrong.
moment. but first, republican senator cindy hyde-smith is the projected win he ner of mississippi s runoff. hyde-smith won yesterday s election with 54% of the vote to become the first woman elected to congress from mississippi. she will serve out the remaining two years of thad cochran s turn with the seat returning to the ballot in 2020. hyde-smith was appointed to replace cochran earlier this year after he resigned. republicans now will hold a 53/47 majority in the senate in january. that is a net gain for republicans of two seats. so let s go right to the big board where we find steve kornacki. steve, how did cindy hyde-smith do it? you can see that nine hours ago i was sitting here and thinking, things are looking surprisingly interesting in mississippi. steve, we don t have your
governors can appoint, which is what happened to cindy hyde-smith, what happened to roger wicker, and they get the same class of people that are part of the establishment and she was put there by the governor and she was supported by mitch mcconnell and that s the kind of candidate that they would pick. i think it s horribly disconcerting. but if you play the long game, if you pay attention to how espy campaigned, f democratic party pays attention to what you did in mississippi, talking about health care and education, not just among poor people, but among working people. that s a theme that the democrats can make huge inroads. we re going to come back to mississippi. we ve got breaking news according to paul manafort and mueller. manafort s attorney has been
steve, pick it up for us. interesting thing. you start talking about those suburban voters there. we saw some of these national stories we talk about all the time start to play themselves out in mississippi last night. i was starting to say, that s why it got interesting early in the night and political gravity reasserted itself. desoto county, hyde-smith wins it 59/41. but check this out. that was a 10-point jump from mike espy from what hillary clinton did and a 10-point jump from what barack obama was able to do in 2012 and 2012 was about as good as it s gotten now for a democrat in mississippi. so we start to look at that and say, look, if espy is starting to overperform there in mississippi, that s a new piece of it from democrat. add in strong support from black
but i think this is really important to say this, that espy ran a campaign to suggest the future of mississippi, that the coalition he built suggests that mississippi along with georgia, along with texas, along with florida, that the south is changing. and it s changing in a way that suggests that the country broadly is changing. but let s put it this way, too, willie. 52% of mississippians are poor. 59% of mississippi s children. i didn t say black people. i said 59% of mississippi s children are poor. what we need to do is look at what cindy hyde-smith s policies are with regard to health care, with regard to living wage. we need to understand what she represents. this is the last i think the the last breath of the inheritors of the plantation class that exploited mississippi for generations. i m beginning to see something here. maybe that s me being hopeful, but i think something is happening. don t you think the expectations were a little built up based on the alabama race