The president’s trip may have accomplished this, according to a new poll. A NBC News/Marist poll Tuesday morning showed that 38 percent of likely voters would vote for Hyde Smith — a 14-point increase from a September poll where only 24 percent said they would vote for her. According to polls, McDaniel lost ground during that time. Only 15% of Mississippi voters likely to vote this week said that they would vote for McDaniel, a figure that is down four points from the September survey. Since September, Mike Espy, a Democrat, has made a slight improvement. Espy received 29 percent of the likely voters in the October poll. This is an increase from the 25 percent he got in September’s poll. In this week’s poll, Tobey Bartee, a less well-known Democrat, was at 2 percent. These four candidates will be running for the Senate seat that was left vacant by Senator Thad Cochran in April. Gov. Phil Bryant named Hyde-Smith, the commissioner of agriculture in the state, to fill the position until the Nov. 6, special election, in which she will be challenged by Espy McDaniel, Bartee, and Bartee. The top two vote-getters in the runoff will be facing each other on November 27 if no candidate gets 50 percent. A question was also asked by NBC News/Marist about the most likely runoff scenarios. If Hyde Smith and Espy were to meet in a runoff contest, 50% said they would vote for Hyde Smith, while 36% said they would vote for Espy. Thirteen percent were undecided. 43 percent of respondents said they would vote to elect Espy, while 36 percent would vote McDaniel if the two met in a runoff. 19% remained undecided. A poll was also conducted to find out how voters feel about the regular U.S. Senate elections for the seat currently held in Republican Sen. Roger Wicker. 57% of likely voters said they would vote for Wicker and 31% said they would vote for David Baria, the Democratic challenger. Three percent of likely voters indicated that they would vote for either Libertarian candidate Danny Bedwell, or Reform candidate Shawn O’Hara. The remaining 9 percent were undecided. The margin of error for the NBC News/Marist poll, which included 511 likely Mississippi voters, was 6.1 percent. It was conducted between October 13-17. The 2016 American Community Survey 5-year estimates of age, gender and income for the poll were used to weight it._x000D