Update: Chris McDaniel did not concede, citing "voting irregularities."
The AP has called the Mississippi primary for Thad Cochran in a squeaker of a race. According to MSNBC, black voters turned out to vote for Cochran over Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel.
Let the post-mortems begin. We're hearing a media narrative already about the idea that black voters rolled the race over to Cochran. But as the New York Times notes:
The Republican establishment in Mississippi rallied around Mr. Cochran. He has brought home millions of dollars in federal projects during his decades in the Senate and would have become chairman of the Appropriations Committee if the Republicans take the Senate in the fall.
Mr. McDaniel, 41, a former radio talk show host, had criticized Mr. Cochran for his outreach to black Democrats, saying it showed how desperate the senator was if he had to chase “ultraliberal” votes. He counted some of the most prominent voices on the far right among his supporters — like former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska — and won the backing of groups like the Club for Growth, which spent millions on his behalf.
So maybe it was ads like this:
