There’s one contest left in the 2019 election season, and it’s a big one: the race for Louisiana governor, where Democratic incumbent John Bel Edwards is seeking a second term. Pre-election polls show Edwards with a consistent but very narrow lead over Republican businessman Eddie Rispone. Early voting has been underway for some time, and polls close at 8 PM local time (9 PM ET, 6 PM PT) on Saturday evening.
Yes, you heard that right: Louisiana conducting its state-level elections on Saturdays. It’s one more example of Louisiana marching to the beat of its own drum, along with its reliance on Napoleon’s civil code, its preference for so-called “jungle” primaries, and—as you might have noticed from the headline—its unique choice to call its subdivisions “parishes” instead of counties.
As we usually do before major elections, Daily Kos Elections is offering benchmarks that help you evaluate whether candidates are on track to win when early results start coming in. These benchmarks tell you not only which parishes matter—in other words, which parishes are large enough to really affect the overall total, so you don’t get hung up by overwhelmingly Republican results coming out of a parish that only has a few thousand residents—but also what percentage the Democratic candidate should shoot for in each of those early-reporting parishes to squeak over the line by the end.
Here are our projections, based on the 2016 presidential election results:
PARISH |
% OF 2016
STATEWIDE VOTE
|
WHAT Edwards NEEDs
TO BREAK 50% |
2016 PRES |
STATEWIDE |
100.0 |
50/50 |
38/58 |
EAST BATON ROUGE |
9.7 |
64/35 |
52/43 |
JEFFERSON |
9.0 |
53/47 |
41/55 |
ORLEANS |
8.2 |
93/7 |
81/15 |
ST. TAMMANY |
6.1 |
34/65 |
22/73 |
CADDO |
5.2 |
63/37 |
51/46 |
LAFAYETTE |
5.2 |
43/57 |
31/65 |
CALCASIEU |
4.1 |
43/57 |
31/65 |
OUACHITA |
3.4 |
48/52 |
36/61 |
LIVINGSTON |
2.8 |
24/76 |
12/85 |
RAPIDES |
2.8 |
44/56 |
32/65 |
ASCENSION |
2.7 |
42/58 |
30/66 |
TANGIPAHOA |
2.6 |
44/56 |
32/65 |
BOSSIER |
2.5 |
42/58 |
30/66 |
TERREBONNE |
2.2 |
36/64 |
24/73 |
LAFOURCHE |
2.1 |
32/68 |
20/77 |
As with all our benchmarks posts, you’ll see three columns of numbers. The first column shows what percentage of the total votes cast statewide came from each parish in 2016; we restrict the list to parishes that make up 2% or more of the vote, mostly just to keep the list a manageable length (Louisiana has 64 total parishes). The third column shows how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump did in 2016, and the middle column—containing the benchmarks—extrapolates from those 2016 numbers to estimate what any Democratic candidate would need to get to hit a statewide target of 50%+1.
There’s one hugely important caveat, though: As we encountered in last week’s election for governor in Kentucky, it’s possible in rare cases for a candidate to fall below their benchmarks but still win. This can happen if turnout spikes for one party but not the other, which is what we saw in some key urban/suburban counties that delivered massive numbers of raw votes for Democrat Andy Beshear even though his margins weren’t where we thought they should be. Put another way, that first column of numbers above can only serve as a prediction. If it’s off, then the second column will be off, too.
Ordinarily we’d stop here, but Louisiana presents an unusual challenge: Edwards didn’t just narrowly win in his first election in 2015, he utterly dominated, at least relative to how red Louisiana usually is. That has a lot to do with the comical awfulness of both Edwards’ opponent, former Sen. David Vitter, and his predecessor, Gov. Bobby Jindal.
What still stands out, though, is that Edwards showed some interesting pockets of strength in parts of the state that haven’t been very supportive of Democrats recently. To address this, we’re going to offer a second table of benchmarks, this time based on the 2015 gubernatorial election. As you’ll see, the benchmarks are extremely different in a few places:
PARISH |
% OF 2015
STATEWIDE VOTE
|
WHAT EDWARDS NEEDS
TO BREAK 50%
|
2015 GOV |
STATEWIDE |
100.0 |
50/50 |
56/44 |
EAST BATON ROUGE |
10.3 |
62/38 |
68/32 |
JEFFERSON |
8.5 |
45/55 |
51/49 |
ORLEANS |
8.2 |
81/19 |
87/13 |
ST. TAMMANY |
6.1 |
33/67 |
39/61 |
CADDO |
5.4 |
56/44 |
62/38 |
LAFAYETTE |
5.1 |
41/59 |
47/53 |
CALCASIEU |
3.8 |
53/47 |
59/41 |
OUACHITA |
3.1 |
43/57 |
49/51 |
LIVINGSTON |
2.4 |
34/66 |
40/60 |
RAPIDES |
2.5 |
46/54 |
52/48 |
ASCENSION |
2.7 |
46/54 |
52/48 |
TANGIPAHOA |
2.9 |
54/46 |
60/40 |
BOSSIER |
2.1 |
31/69 |
37/63 |
TERREBONNE |
1.9 |
36/64 |
42/58 |
LAFOURCHE |
2.0 |
38/62 |
44/56 |
One place where Edwards dramatically outperformed Clinton isn’t very surprising: Tangipahoa Parish, an exurban area on the far side of Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Not only did Edwards represent part of the parish in the state House for most of a decade, but his father, Frank Edwards, was sheriff there as well.
Edwards also did very well in some of the most French-inflected, traditionally Cajun parts of the state. He outright won in usually dark-red Calcasieu Parish, where Lake Charles is located, and he also significantly overperformed Lafourche Parish in the state’s swampy southeast.
By contrast, you could say that Clinton did unusually well in Jefferson Parish, at least relative to Edwards’ model for winning the state. Though she didn’t win, or even come very close, the presidential model for winning in Louisiana would require Edwards to carry Jefferson, while Edwards’ own model doesn't neccessitate a win there (though Edwards did in fact narrowly prevail there in 2015).
There’s a ready explanation for this seeming conundrum, though: Jefferson Parish, to the west of New Orleans, is the closest Louisiana comes to having traditional well-educated suburbs, though it’s also home to a number of impoverished areas along the Mississippi River as well. Affluent suburbia is where Clinton tended to make the biggest gains over previous Democratic presidential candidates, gains that in many places expanded in the 2018 midterms.
You might also notice that the Edwards model for winning the state doesn't require anywhere near as strong a performance in New Orleans as the presidential model does. Again, his strength in non-traditional regions elsewhere is the biggest reason. But there also isn’t much room to grow in the Big Easy, where the Democratic vote is already pretty much maxed out given that the city is mostly black, and most of the white residents are on the progressive or at least tolerant side as well.
Whew, that’s a lot of data, you might be saying. Well, that’s still not enough data for our purposes! We’re going to try one other method, this time using the most recent data that exists, from last month’s all-party primary. Modeling that election poses a challenge, though, because there were six candidates. But what we can do is consolidate, on side of the ledger, Edwards plus the other Democratic and independent candidates, and on the other side of the ledger, the three Republican contenders.
That gets us very close to a 50/50 race, though the three Republicans together added up to 52%, so it’s clear that Edwards’ best shot at winning is to pick up a few recalcitrant supporters of GOP Rep. Ralph Abraham, who finished third in the top-two primary—or to hope enough stay home. Edwards could also do it the hard way, by significantly expanding the universe of voters instead, and he might just succeed, as reports indicate heavy early voting turnout in African-American areas.
PARISH |
% OF 2019
STATEWIDE VOTE
|
WHAT EDWARDS NEEDS
TO BREAK 50%
|
2019 PRIMARY |
STATEWIDE |
100.0 |
50/50 |
48/52 |
EAST BATON ROUGE |
10.2 |
65/35 |
63/37 |
JEFFERSON |
8.3 |
57/43 |
55/45 |
ORLEANS |
7.4 |
91/9 |
89/11 |
ST. TAMMANY |
5.9 |
41/59 |
39/61 |
CADDO |
4.6 |
57/43 |
55/45 |
LAFAYETTE |
5.0 |
40/60 |
38/62 |
CALCASIEU |
4.0 |
47/53 |
45/55 |
OUACHITA |
3.1 |
40/60 |
38/62 |
LIVINGSTON |
2.7 |
31/69 |
29/71 |
RAPIDES |
2.9 |
41/59 |
39/61 |
ASCENSION |
2.8 |
47/53 |
45/55 |
TANGIPAHOA |
2.5 |
52/48 |
50/50 |
BOSSIER |
2.1 |
33/67 |
31/69 |
TERREBONNE |
2.1 |
38/62 |
36/64 |
LAFOURCHE |
2.1 |
39/61 |
37/63 |
Interestingly, the 2019 primary map shows Edwards relying on more of a suburban strategy than he did in his 2015 victory. In particular, the governor performed even better than before in Jefferson Parish. This seems to confirm that what happened nationwide in last year’s midterms—when the affluent suburbs that were anti-Trump in 2016 swung even harder against the GOP in 2018—is still happening today.
At the same time, though, he fared considerably worse in Acadiana, falling well short of his 2015 numbers in Calcasieu and Lafourche Parishes, suggesting at least some of Edwards’ earlier success there was more of an anti-David Vitter vote than anything else. Edwards performance also fell off somewhat in his home turf of Tangipahoa Parish, so if his favorite-son status no longers carry as much weight, that might suggest there’s also something of a general blue-collar turn away from Edwards.
With all that in mind, you might treat the three different models as a bit of an experiment. On Saturday, we’ll find out which one comes closest.