Democrats need to sharpen their organization in Mississippi to appeal to a broader swath of voters in statewide races, political scientists say.
“We don’t, in my opinion, have an active, healthy two-party system in this state,” Jackson State University’s Mary Coleman said during a public-affairs luncheon in Jackson.
She said Democratic candidates in Mississippi need to pay attention to young voters — something done successfully by President-elect Barack Obama, who tapped into the Internet’s vast social-networking system to communicate with voters nationwide.
Obama, a Democrat, won the national election on Nov. 4, but lost Mississippi to Republican John McCain. The state has gone Republican in every presidential election since 1980.
Coleman and fellow political scientist Marty Wiseman of Mississippi State University gave their postelection analysis Monday during a luncheon sponsored by the Capitol press corps and MSU’s Stennis Institute of Government.
