Democrats face a structural disadvantage in the Mississippi gubernatorial election this year
A 2020 constitutional amendment removed the "double-majority" requirement and the legislature's power to pick a winner, but retained the majority-vote requirement
For the second straight election in a row, Mississippi Democrats are fielding an credible candidate for Governor. On January 12, Public Service Commission Brandon Presley—who won his current post in 2007 and was re-elected in 2011, 2015, and 2019—announced that he would challenge incumbent Republican Governor Tate Reeves for re-election. Filing for the race closed on February 1, Presley and Reeves only face token opposition in their primaries, queueing up an interesting race.
Though Mississippi is a staunchly conservative state, Presley’s strength as a candidate, coupled with Reeves’s poor approval ratings, could set the scene for an upset. Presley has something else going in his favor, too: the 2023 Mississippi gubernatorial election is the first one since 1889 where the state legislature stands no chance of picking the winner. But even with this threat removed, Presley still faces a huge structural challenge—under the state constitution, if no candidate receives a majority of the vote, a runoff election will be held, which will likely be to Reeves’s benefit.
When Mississippi adopted its new constitution in 1890, it imposed a unique requirement for its statewide elections. To win a statewide election, the winner was required to win a majority of the vote and a majority of the State House districts. In the event that a candidate failed to do so, the election would fall to the State House.
As I’ve written about, majority-vote requirements for statewide elections—with the legislature picking a winner if no candidate won a majority—weren’t terribly uncommon. All New England states had them until the late 19th or early 20th centuries, and Vermont still does. (The 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial elections were actually resolved by the state legislature in Vermont!) Georgia had a similar system from the 1820s until the adoption of its 1976 Constitution, which adopted a runoff-election in lieu of legislative selection. And in the last few years, motivated by the string of runoff election that Georgia has seen, legislators have tinkered with the process. Several other states have adopted majority-vote requirements with runoff elections if no candidate received a majority. And in the handful of states with alternative electoral systems—the jungle primary in Louisiana, top-two primaries in California and Washington, and ranked-choice voting in Alaska and Maine—majority-vote requirements are inherent to the process.
But no state has ever opted for a double-majority requirement—other than Mississippi. Its intent here was remarkably clear. Soloman Saladin Calhoon, the president of the 1890 constitutional convention where the requirement was adopted, was quite explicit:
This ballot system must be arranged as to effect one object, permit me to say—for we find the two races now together, the rule of one of which has always meant economic and moral ruin; we find another race whose rule has always meant prosperity and happiness, and prosperity and happiness to all races.
In other words, adopting a host of byzantine electoral procedures and disenfranchisement provisions was done to further white rule and white supremacy.
According to the common lore, the first time that a candidate failed to win the requisite double majority was in 1991. Prior to this point, it would’ve made sense that the requirement existed in the background—Mississippi was part of the Solid South and the real contests for most statewide races were in the Democratic primaries. With the effects of the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy finally trickling down into downballot races in Southern states by the late 20th century, it made sense that the double-majority requirement might come into play. In three straight election cycles, one statewide race was thrown to the State House: the 1991 and 1995 lieutenant-gubernatorial elections and the 1999 gubernatorial election.
But as my research uncovered, the first election to be thrown to the State House was in 1903, when no candidate got a majority of the vote in the election for Supreme Court Clerk. The incumbent Clerk died in office, and it was too late to hold a primary, so all candidates—all of whom were Democrats—were placed on the November ballot. Predictably, no candidate received a majority in the ensuing free-for-all, and the first-place winner received just 37% of the vote. The legislature then stepped in, and elected George Myers, the first-place winner and acting Clerk.
After then, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the double-majority requirement was an issue—and then it was invoked thrice in a row. In 1991, incumbent Lieutenant Governor Brad Dye, a Democrat, ran for re-election against Republican Eddie Briggs. Owing to the independent candidacy of civil rights activist Henry Kirksey, no candidate got a majority: Dye got just 41.5% to Briggs’s 49.5%, with Kirskey winning 9%. Dye could’ve continued his campaign and persuaded the overwhelming Democratic majority in the State House to elect him over Briggs, but he didn’t—instead, he conceded, and the State House unanimously elected Briggs. The saga repeated itself in 1995, when Briggs ran for re-election. Though Democrat Ronnie Musgrove won a majority of the popular vote, he didn’t win a majority of the State House districts. Briggs conceded rather than contesting the election.
In 1999, when Musgrove ran for Governor, he won only a thin plurality over Republican Mike Parker, and the two evenly split the state’s 122 House districts. Parker, however, sought to have the State House install him as Governor anyway. Predictably, given the partisan makeup of the State House, he overwhelmingly lost that effort, and Musgrove was elected, 86-36.
After then, the double-majority requirement wasn’t invoked. It was a small issue in 2003, when Musgrove unsuccessfully ran for re-election against Republican Haley Barbour, but the overwhelming Republican victories in 2007, 2011, and 2015 meant that the constitution’s requirements were a mere formality.
But in 2019, a close race for Governor developed between longtime Attorney General Jim Hood, the Democratic nominee, and Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves, the Republican nominee. A federal lawsuit was filed to challenge the constitutionality of the double-majority requirement, and the federal judge hearing the case declined to rule on that question, but indicated that he believed it was unconstitutional. When Reeves won the requisite double majority, nothing further happened in the case.
Rather than deal with constant questions as to the double-majority requirement’s constitutionality, the legislature submitted a constitutional amendment in 2020 that significantly modified the requirements for statewide elections. The amendment retained the majority-vote requirement, but only with respect to the popular vote; the requirement that a candidate receive a majority of State House districts was tossed. And instead of the State House picking the winner in the event that no candidate won a popular-vote majority, a runoff election would be held between the top two candidates.
As a result, the 2023 gubernatorial election is the first partisan general election in Mississippi’s history that may require a runoff election—and the first election since 1889 where the double-majority requirement won’t be in place.
But Presley will have a tough time winning an absolute majority of the vote—and his odds in an off-cycle runoff election held in late November might be even longer. Early polling shows Reeves below 50%, but with a single-digit lead over Presley. Prior to this point, Mississippi’s runoff elections have either been in the context of primary elections, nonpartisan judicial runoffs, and special elections. Given that Mississippi has never had a runoff election like this one before, the dynamics of the possible race are unclear. Historically, runoff elections in the South have seen reduced Black turnout—and this was by design—though the 2021 U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia are a powerful counterexample of this broader trend. And in 2014, when Republican U.S. Senator Thad Cochran faced a runoff election against far-right State Senator Chris McDaniel, he used the mechanics of the runoff to persuade Black Democratic voters to pick him over McDaniel.
On the other hand, Reeves’s low approval ratings might prevent him from winning a majority of the vote—and Presley’s supporters (and Reeves’s detractors) might be more energized in a runoff election. Perhaps the Presley campaign will be able to draw from Raphael Warnock’s successful strategy last year, in which he managed to persuade enough voters who otherwise voted for Republicans, and may have even preferred Republican control of the Senate, to vote for him against a flawed incumbent.
In any event, needing a popular-vote majority likely makes it harder for Presley to win this year—not as hard as it would’ve been for Jim Hood to win in 2019, certainly, but harder than it would be in the absence of a majority-vote requirement. It may give Presley another bite at the apple if he isn’t able to beat Reeves outright on November 7, but he has good reason to fear a runoff election.