A federal judge ordered special elections after earlier ordering the state to redraw the electoral map used to select justices, concluding the current configuration dilutes the power of Black voters.

When you break the supermajority in the Senate, money bills, especially taxing and spending, budget, a lot of times it takes a supermajority to get those bills passed. If there is no supermajority, then that means that the Republican leadership within the Senate will have to negotiate with most of the Black people elected as Democrats.

A federal judge previously ruled the state would have to redraw the district lines for the Mississippi Supreme Court, saying the current ones unfairly dilute the Black vote.

Mississippi has agreed to voluntarily turn over its full voter registration list to the U.S. Department of Justice, even as the federal government filed lawsuits against four other jurisdictions for refusing to provide the records.

Polling in off-year election cycles is challenging because it’s hard to know who will turn out to vote. This year, the polls significantly overestimated the Republicans in the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races, which both had particularly high turnout for an off year. In 2021, polls had the opposite problem, as they overestimated Democrats.