DeSoto County, a Republican stronghold, key to Scott Colom’s midterm election performance

By Bobby Harrison | Originally published by Mississippi Today

If Democrat Scott Colom ultimately wins Mississippi’s closely contested U.S. Senate race, upsetting Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, he needs to send a special thank you to the Memphis suburb of DeSoto County.

Surprisingly, it appears Colom will win DeSoto County, long viewed as one of the state’s Republican strongholds. But more important than the DeSoto victory for Colom is the vote totals in the county.

In the 2024 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump garnered 48,064 votes in DeSoto County to 29,023 for Democrat Kamala Harris.

When all the votes from Tuesday’s election are finally counted in the coming days, Colom will ultimately match Harris’ vote total in DeSoto County or fall just short of it. By the same token, Hyde-Smith garnered fewer than 25,000 votes in DeSoto County, significantly underperforming Trump. The last time she was on the ballot, in the presidential election year of 2020, Hyde-Smith performed as well as Trump in DeSoto County, winning more than 40,000 votes.

Put simply, if she had performed as well this year as she did in 2020 in that one county – DeSoto – she would not be staring at a potential history-making upset.

If he does win, Colom would be the first Democrat in Mississippi to win a U.S. Senate race since 1982 and the first challenger to upset an incumbent Mississippi senator since, gulp, 1942.

A long-running joke is the political prognosticator proclaiming to a spellbound audience that the outcome of the election would depend on turnout. All election outcomes depend on turnout.

But Tuesday’s Senate election in Mississippi really, no really, depended on turnout, and Scott Colom and his team should be credited for a campaign that turned out his voters for what could be one of the most improbable victories in the history of not only the state but the nation. Hyde-Smith was not able to turn out her voters at the same level.

It is no secret that midterm election turnout is generally much less than the turnout in presidential elections. The turnout for this year’s midterm in Mississippi is most likely record-breaking, nearing 1 million votes, but still more than 200,000 short of the turnout in the 2024 presidential election and more than 300,000 short of the total in the 2020 election.

The midterm turnout will be about 100,000 more than the 2023 Mississippi gubernatorial election in which incumbent Republican Tate Reeves beat Democrat Brandon Presley by about 25,000 votes.

DeSoto County provides the example of how Colom was able to exceed Presley’s performance. Colom got nearly 15,000 more votes than Presley in the county.

DeSoto is not the only reason for Colom’s stunningly strong performance, but it is the biggest factor.

And it should be noted that DeSoto County has long been a bit of an enigma when it comes to Mississippi electioneering.

DeSoto for years has been the fastest or one of the fastest-growing Mississippi counties, thanks in large part to Memphis transplants. While the county grew to one of the state’s largest, it also was home to a large number of low-propensity voters. The Tennessee transplants did not appear to take much of an interest in Mississippi elections.

In 1999, Ronnie Musgrove, Mississippi’s last Democratic governor, barely lost to Republican Mike Parker in DeSoto County by a vote of 9,301 to 9,144. But in 2003, Musgrove’s Republican challenger, Haley Barbour, recognized the potential of DeSoto County and spent an inordinate amount of time campaigning in the Memphis suburb. Then-President George W. Bush campaigned for Barbour in DeSoto County. Barbour’s work led to him defeating Musgrove in DeSoto by 18,689 votes to 8,876 votes.

With that performance, DeSoto was birthed as one of the state’s  Republican strongholds.

Trump captured more than 60% of the votes in DeSoto County in each of his three presidential campaigns and a high of 48,064 votes in 2024. Remember, Hyde-Smith won fewer than 25,000 votes there last week.

Outside of presidential elections, though, DeSoto countians still appear to have only a lukewarm interest in Mississippi elections and politicians.

That is most likely why Trump came to DeSoto in 2018 during Hyde-Smith’s initial Senate campaign to stump for her.

This year, Trump opted to go to Corinth in northeast Mississippi instead of DeSoto County on the northwest side of the  state to campaign for Hyde-Smith.

Perhaps that decision was the wrong one. Or perhaps, Trump’s policies are unpopular even in what is believed to be a Republican stronghold like DeSoto County.

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article