Espy Would Need Unprecedented Swing to Win

Geoffrey Skelley: “We don’t often see a runoff in a general election, but if Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith were to lose Mississippi’s Senate runoff on Tuesday, after the two Republican candidates combined to win a sizable majority of the initial vote, that would be even more unusual.”

“In the first round, Republicans Hyde-Smith and Chris McDaniel combined for a bit less than 58 percent of the vote, while Democrat Mike Espy and one other candidate from his party together won a little more than 42 percent. For Espy to win, the runoff vote has to swing more than 15 points more Democratic than the initial vote margin.”

“But if we look at the five Senate elections since 1990 where an initial round of voting was held on the national Election Day and two candidates advanced to a runoff, no challenger has ever come close to outperforming the previous round of voting by the kind of margin Espy would need to win.”