Mississippi is in play for Barack Obama this election. The latest Rasmussen Reports poll shows:
50% McCain
44% Obama
Yeah, thats only a 6% margin. Below explains how likely it will be for Obama to win MS.
Data:
The black population of Mississippi is 37.10%. That makes the non-black population 62.90%.
Two Ifs:
-If Obama were to receive ~90% of the black vote (which is not out of the question).
-And if the percentage of blacks that vote in November are close to their population percentage in MS (37.10%).
Analysis:
Obama would only need to win 27% of the white vote in MS to win the state.
37.10% * 90.00% = 33.39%
62.90% * 27.00% = 16.98%
============== 50.37%
Blacks made up 34% of the voting percentage in 2004 in MS. I assume it will be a higher percentage in 2008.
However, Kerry only got 22% of whites in MS in 2004.
Conclusion:
In order for Obama to win Mississippi, he'll need to do ~5% better with whites than Kerry did. If he wins 90% of the black vote, then he'll need to get ~27% of the white vote in order to win MS, or 5% better with the white vote than Kerry did in MS.