Sen. Thad Cochran, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, won a runoff election Tuesday in Mississippi after placing second in a June 3 primary in which no candidate won 50 percent of the votes. Cochran beat Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniels 190,633 to 184,260, according to the Associated Press’s vote count. Fewer than 1,500 votes separated the two candidates in the primary, but neither men earned enough votes to win the election outright. McDaniels did not concede…