Another Good GOP Night

Following up on last month’s big win in California, Republican candidates in the South look good in tonight’s races. In Kentucky, Ernie Fletcher was an easy ten-point winner over Ben Chandler. In Mississippi, where the election has generally been described as too close to call, Haley Barbour is leading the incumbent Democrat by eight points with 43% of the precincts reporting. That would normally be considered an insurmountable margin; we’ll see the final tally in the morning.
Here’s a prediction: if Barbour wins, we won’t see any more commentary like this: “Republican powerbroker Haley Barbour is counting on his Washington connections to help him get elected governor of Mississippi on Tuesday in a race that could serve as a test of President Bush’s popularity in the Deep South going into 2004.”