Power in Mississippi's government is distributed by the state's Constitution between the executive and legislative branches.

[3] After a biracial Populist-Republican coalition gained power in the late 1880s, the Democrats returned in force to the state government.

To prevent such a coalition and to reduce the violence around elections, they decided to expel African Americans from state politics.

Mississippi white residents, as in the rest of the South, long supported the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party regained political control of the state in the 1870s, partly by using violence and fraud to suppress black voter turnout and turn elections in their favor.

The first sign of this discontent was in the 1948 presidential election, when the Dixiecrat slate of Strom Thurmond and Mississippi Governor Fielding Wright won a majority of the state's popular vote, largely by virtue of Dixiecrat supporters taking over the state Democratic machinery.

In 1964, the white voters in the state swung over dramatically to support Barry Goldwater, who took an unheard-of 87 percent of the state's white popular vote (this was while most African Americans were still disfranchised and effectively could not vote) in the midst of Lyndon Johnson's 44-state national landslide.

The MFDP also mounted protests at the national Democratic convention, seeking to be seated as official delegates.

He continued to be re-elected from Holmes County and in the late 20th century, was elected three times as speaker of the House.

Although civil rights groups mounted legal challenges, Mississippi's constitution was upheld for some time.

Barbour's governorship was dominated by recovery efforts for Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the state's largest disasters since the 1927 Mississippi River floods.

Republican lieutenant governor Phil Bryant went on to defeat DuPree in the general election with 61% of the vote.

Bryant was reelected with 67% of the vote in 2015, the highest percentage ever received by a Republican candidate for governor in Mississippi.

This led to the awkward arrangement where Briggs was able to appoint Republican chairmen to committees in the State Senate despite Democrats holding the majority.

As a result, 2020 marked the first time since Reconstruction that Republicans held every statewide office in the state.

Despite increasing Republican successes in statewide races beginning in the 1980s, Democrats continued to maintain large advantages in the state legislature into the 21st Century.

The counties serve both legislative and executive functions; the decentralization into beats with few controls on individual supervisors led to problems with wasteful purchasing, inefficient government and, in some cases, corruption.

The FBI had carried out a lengthy investigation and a sting called Operation Pretense to gain evidence in these cases.

Statewide prohibition of alcohol did not end until 1966, making Mississippi the last state with such a ban in force.

In some cities, the sale of refrigerated beer for off-site consumption is prohibited, with such ordinances being notably enforced in the state's largest college towns of Oxford and Starkville.

Consensual same sex relations were illegal in Mississippi until Lawrence v. Texas struck down all state anti-sodomy laws in 2003.

[14] In 2004, Mississippi voters approved an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman with 86% of the vote.

In June 2015, Mississippi's same-sex marriage ban was struck down by the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.

The law was struck down, once again by judge Carlton Reeves, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution in July 2016.

Attorney General Jim Hood issued a statement indicating he would not pursue to appeal the decision.