Blacks Regain Sway at Polls in Mississippi

JACKSON, Miss. — For the first time since President Richard M. Nixon’s divisive “Southern strategy” that sent whites to the Republican Party and blacks to the Democrats, African-American voters have come out in force for a Republican in the Deep South.

Now they are hoping to flex political muscles long atrophied after supporting Senator Thad Cochran on Tuesday in his runoff victory against a Tea Party challenger.

“We’re in a moment here,” said Floyd Smith, an African-American and a longtime political worker who canvassed Jackson’s black precincts for Mr. Cochran. “Black folks went out and voted for a Republican. That’s history.”

The Mississippi voters who handed Mr. Cochran his narrow victory over State Senator Chris McDaniel were a complex and historic amalgam of black Democrats, rural and suburban white Republicans, and even union members, all put off by Mr. McDaniel’s rhetorical broadsides and austere promises.

Although Cochran campaign officials and longtime Democratic officials said white Republican voters probably made the biggest difference in Mr. Cochran’s victory, blacks turned out in record numbers for a Mississippi Republican primary.

They were driven in part by Mr. Cochran’s organization and outreach, but also by a sense, they said, that Mr. McDaniel had been overly vicious in his attacks on President Obama and incendiary in the racial undertones of his pitch to white voters that “it’s time to defend our way of life again.”

Black voters said that with the long odds for any Democrat in a statewide election here, both Mr. Cochran and Mr. McDaniel would most likely beat the Democratic candidate, former Representative Travis Childers, in November. Given that choice, they said they preferred Mr. Cochran.

“People saw the Tea Party as the bigger threat,” said Carl Brown, a black 44-year-old pastor, who was sitting in Scott’s Style Shop, a barbershop in Yazoo City. “They’re on the news saying, ‘We want to go back to the good old days.’ Good old days for who?”