We\u2019ll be live-blogging the election results all night long, so stick with us right here!<\/b>
\nTuesday evening marks the last senatorial election of 2018, with Democratic contender Mike Espy and Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith duking it out for the top prize in Mississippi.
The two first faced off during the November 6 midterm elections, but neither was able to cinch the 50 percent of the vote needed to take the Senate seat and so the race went into runoffs.
Polls opened throughout Mississippi starting at 7 a.m. Tuesday and will close at 7 p.m. Results should start coming in shortly after that and a decision is expected to be reached tonight. We\u2019ll be live-blogging the election results all night long, so stick with us right here!
Republican candidate for Senate Cindy Hyde-Smith and President Donald Trump wave as they exit Air Force One upon arrival for a rally at the Tupelo Regional Airport, in Tupelo, Mississippi, on November 26. Drew Angerer\/Getty Images
While the initial election was tight\u2014Espy received just 0.4 points less than Hyde-Smith, the Republican is expected to win the runoff with a much wider margin. Internal polling shows that she has at least 5 points on Espy, and a recent survey gave her a 10-point lead.
Still, the senator who was nominated by Mississippi governor Phil Bryant this spring to finish ailing Senator Thad Cochran\u2019s term has been embroiled in racial controversy these past few weeks and could suffer the consequences at the polls tonight.
Hyde-Smith told a supporter earlier this month that if he invited her \u201cto a public hanging, I\u2019d be on the front row.\u201d Mississippi has a long, dark history of African American lynchings and hangings, including the violent murder and hanging of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955.
It was later revealed that Hyde-Smith attended a white segregationist school and sent her daughter to one as well. She has sponsored bills intended to celebrate Confederate Civil War officers and in 2014 posed in a Confederate Civil War hat while holding a rifle. She captioned the photo, \u201cMississippi history at its best!\u201d
Google, Major League Baseball and Walmart all withdrew their financial support for the candidate after these details came to light.
Still, President Donald Trump supports the candidate wholeheartedly. He made two campaign stops in Mississippi to rally for her on Monday and tweeted about her multiple times Tuesday.
That\u2019s likely because Hyde-Smith is the biggest ally he has in Senate. She has voted with the president 100 percent of the time, more than any other Republican Senator.
In a state that Trump won by 17 points in 2016, his support can make a big difference on Election Day.
\u201cMake no mistake\u2014a vote for me is a vote for [Trump] and #MAGA,\u201d Hyde-Smith tweeted Tuesday. \u201cIt’s why Liberal Mike Espy and the radical DNC have targeted our campaign for defeat, and it’s why we need to make sure EVERY MS conservative gets to the polls on 11\/27.\u201d
If Espy is elected, meanwhile, he would be the first African-American senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction. His win would also be a huge boon to Democrats as Mississippi is a ruby-red state.
Espy, a former secretary of agriculture under President Bill Clinton, has also had high-profile politicians like former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Cory Booker campaign on his behalf.<\/p>\n