From the moment votes began to pour in from Mississippi on election night the same question was on everyone's mind; Can Brandon Presley pull this off? The answer became more clear with each new completed county. No, he wasn’t going to become the first Democrat to win the Governor’s Mansion since 1999, but he was going to come closer than anyone since, including Ronnie Musgrove in his reelection bid. Votes have been trickling in over the past two weeks and some will still be tallied, but, as of publishing, Reeves was leading 51-47.7. No one who has even a cursory understanding of elections or the state of Mississippi would call this an underperformance. Presley has a lot to be proud of, and might just do it again in 2027.

Before the election, Pivot Point published an article looking into ten counties. Five lost by Biden in 2020, but carried by Jim Hood in the previous governor’s election and/or Mike Espy in the special election for the Senate. The other five hadn’t been carried by any of the three. Looking at the results, Presley flipped five counties blue from Jim Hood’s slightly less herculean effort in 2019, though couldn’t hold two others. As suggested might be the case in the article, Presley found most of his flips in his Public Service Commission district. Grenada, Lowndes and Winston haven’t voted for a Democrat at the top of the presidential ticket since at least 1980, and in Lowndes case 1956. Though Lowndes is actually the closest of the ten in presidential races these days, Espy even flipped it in his Senate races. Al Gore was the last Democrat to carry Yalobusha. 

He found his last county flip in the south. Presley winning Forrest county, powered by the majority African American city of Hattiesburg, is something of a watershed moment for Democrats given the county’s namesake being a Confederate General and first Grand Wizard of the KKK. Forrest hasn’t voted for a national Democratic ticket since FDR. It was among the article’s “most likely to flip” of the six Hood didn’t win, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive.

Presley had more trouble holding turf Hood won. Losing ground in three of five. Lafayette, home to Ole Miss, and Madison, suburbs of Jackson, seem like it would be friendly territory for the modern Democratic coalition, but Reeves won both. The counties home to college towns, Lafayette and Forrest, went in opposite directions, though maybe it shouldn’t be shocking that the whiter of the two counties, actually the whitest of the ten counties, would go to Republicans in a state as racially polarized as Mississippi. What is puzzling is why Hood won it by five and Presley lost by nearly five. It may just be noise, but Lafayette’s margin warrants further investigation once all the dust settles.

Montgomery came tantalizingly close to flipping with Presley coming up short by just seventeen votes. The lone county highlighted by the article Hood lost four years ago not to flip this time. Hood lost it by four points while Presley’s deficit was just over half a percent, and will be one to watch out for if he decides to run again in four years. In the article, Lee county was listed as an honorable mention. Not a county to watch for flipping, but one to watch for the margin. It is home to Tupelo, where Elvis is from, and Nettleton, where Brandon Presley served as Mayor. Monroe is also worth mentioning as it is Brandon’s home county. Both saw sizable shifts towards the Democrat. Lee shifted towards Presley by five points and Monroe by nearly nine so far, though Monroe hasn’t certified their results yet.

These county’s flipping or not is informative, but ultimately academic. Presley won seventy percent of the highlighted counties compared to Hood’s forty percent, but they netted him fewer votes. Hinds, home to Jackson, gave Presley higher margins than Hood and Espy. African American support for Presley was astronomical after being anemic in neighboring Louisiana’s primary. Presley’s northern district may be where he found most of his flips, but the Mississippi Delta is where he ate into Reeve’s 2019 margin. The article mentioned how difficult it would be to match Espy among African American voters and Hood among White voters. As the final county certifications get filed, his ultimate coalition is pretty unexpected. Presley was able to accomplish a hybrid of the two coalitions, but even that wasn’t enough in a state like this. He did about as well as anyone could have reasonably expected, except maybe Col. Tom Parker. When all is said and done, he’ll have closed Hood’s gap by about forty percent, now the inevitable question becomes can Presley pull it off in 2027?