Tuesday, April 05, 2016

SO WHO'S MISSISSIPPI'S PREFERRED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE? YOU PROBABLY GUESSED WRONG.

This is getting a lot of attention:
... Donald Trump could turn Mississippi blue for the first time in 40 years, according to a Mason-Dixon poll released Tuesday.

...the Mason-Dixon poll suggests that Trump fares the worst against Hillary Clinton in a general election -- meaning the state could vote for the Democrat for the first time in a presidential election since 1976, when Jimmy Carter carried the state by a narrow margin over incumbent President Gerald Ford.

The Republican front-runner holds a 3-point lead over Clinton statewide, 46 percent to 43 percent with 11 percent undecided. Trump’s advantage, however, falls within the margin of error, while Cruz and John Kasich safely carry the state by double-digit margins.

Compared with his Republican rivals, Trump has the least percentage of support across the board. Cruz and Kasich have a greater percentage of support among white and black voters; men and women; and Democrats, Republicans and independents.
Trump has alienated a lot of people -- and yet you'd assume that, Mississippi being Mississippi, the favorite candidate if it's not Trump, would be the non-Trump with the reputation for being extremely conservative.

It turns out you'd be wrong:
Statewide, Cruz leads Clinton 51%-40% and Kasich is ahead by an even larger 52%-37% margin.
Kasich does better than Cruz? The difference is slight, but it's there. Strange, given the fact that the Republican primary results were Trump 47%, Cruz 36%, Kasich 9%. I can't find the crosstabs, but I wonder if Kasich is gulling moderates and even some Democrats in Mississippi the way he is further north.

Meanwhile, a state that has an outside chance of going Democratic in the fall is doing this now:
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant has signed a controversial "religious freedom" bill into law.

The law, HB 1523, promises that the state government will not punish people who refuse to provide services to people because of a religious opposition to same-sex marriage, extramarital sex or transgender people....

The law protects, among other things, state employees who refuse to license marriages, religious organizations who fire or discipline employees and individuals who decline to provide counseling or some medical services based on those oppositions.
Yes, there's even more to this than you've heard:



Well, some institutions do feel it's their right to fire people for what they do on their own time, like cohabit with partners, even opposite-sex partners.

I don't know how all this fits together. Maybe you can explain it.
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