Jackson Free Press

Early figures regarding the elections point to the rural and suburban areas of Mississippi for the greatest support for both George W. Bush and the gay-marriage ban. A CNN News poll shows Bush carried the state with a 59.63 percent, or about 671,027 votes, over Kerry's 39.60 percent, or about 445,596 votes. Rural areas, such as Greene County's 14 precincts overwhelmingly supported Bush at 72.64 percent, or 3,850 votes, over Kerry's 26.81 percent, or 1,421 votes. Greene County also carried the amendment with 93 percent in favor, or 4,921 votes, as opposed to seven percent at 379 votes against. Though primarily African-American counties, such as Issaquena, preferred the Democratic Kerry with an eight-point lead, the county's five small precincts still approved the gay ban with an eight out of 10 rating of 677 votes over 158.

Many suburban areas, primarily white, followed the habits of the rural spots. The 42 precincts of Madison County approved Bush with a 65 percent margin over Kerry's 35, while the gay marriage ban got a whopping 86 percent approval over a 14 percent against vote.

Hinds County, with its heavily populated 120 precincts, approved Kerry with 51,370 votes, or about 60 percent, over 34,269 votes, or about 40 percent, over Bush. Though the county stuck to its anti-gay guns with a 79 percent ban approval over 21 percent against the gay marriage ban, the figures were still slightly skewed toward tolerance than other areas of the state. On a side note, Hinds County's major city, Jackson, adopted the very un-conservative stance of approving a tax hike to fund the construction of a local convention center with a 66-percent approval rate.

Marty Wiseman of the Stennis Institute said that conservative, values-based voting has always been a political mainstay for rural voters: "When you get into rural areas you have a much more conservative value structure. Sociologists have looked at this for decades and you've got a very real set of values in that most people living in the rural areas agree on what the unwritten rules are. ... [Y]our extended family, your family and your friends and neighbors all share the same ideas and make sure you abide by them."

"You get into urban areas and by nature it's a different world because you have all sorts of different kinds of people who come from across the globe, and tolerance is the watchword there," Wiseman said.

Joe Atkins, associate professor of journalism at Ole Miss, said that the gay marriage ban—which The Clarion-Ledger endorsed with "why not?"—united a conservative base. "Those constitutional amendments on the ballots in states like ours did make a difference in galvanizing the rural vote. The people who voted for those amendments felt the values issue was important to them so they went with Bush," Atkins said, adding, "I think they've been voting against their own interest for some time, but they did through a larger number this time," Atkins said.

Atkins said Democrats would have to break the Republican strangle-hold on morals. "There's nothing moral, for instance, about going to war on false premises and giving tax cuts to the wealthy while the rest of us have to struggle," he said.

Wiseman said "Democrats are going to have to find someone with a southern accent," like Bill Clinton, suggesting that perhaps a Gephardt out of Missouri would have been able to better solidify the base.

"Clinton took some Republican issues, made them Democratic issues and won with them. Democrats are going to have to learn from this," Wiseman said, and suggested that if the country was truly going to get "completely biblical" about protecting marriage then we should devise an "amendment on adultery."