It's unclear why, but it appears that Blanco is closing the gap in the final days of the Louisiana gubernatorial campaign.
In a tracking poll conducted Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night, whose numbers were released yesterday, Republican Bobby Jindal led the race by nine points. But the last night of the 200 person sample of likely voters seemed to indicate a bump for Blanco:
The rolling sample of 600 taken Saturday, Monday and Tuesday nights pegged it at 48.7 percent for Jindal and 39.5 percent for Blanco.
The numbers for each night's sample of 200 were as follows: Jindal was 47.5 percent on Saturday, 52.1 percent on Monday and 46.5 percent on Tuesday night. Blanco was 37.8 percent on Saturday, 37.3 percent on Monday and 43.3 percent on Tuesday.
Pollster Verne Kennedy and the Jindal campaign downplayed the sudden hit for Blanco, but according to some folks I spoke to connected to the Blanco campaign and say the trend has been confirmed by the latest overnight numbers from the same tracking poll. There's a brief press release from the Blanco campaign discussing the results here. Limiting the sample to the last two nights shows a tie, with the last night giving Democrat Kathleen Blanco a three point lead.
Some notes on the poll:
Verne Kennedy works for a Pensacola, Florida based company called Marketing Research and Insight. He was commissioned to conduct the tracking poll at the behest of a group of twenty-five wealthy businessmen in the state who support both candidates. Both candidates have access to the numbers and methodology, though the media doesn't give all that to the public.
Anyway, I know there's been lots of naysaying the Blanco candidacy on this site over the last two weeks (I've been doing some of it myself), and I thought some good news might be in order after the statewide debacles in Kentucky and Mississippi.
It's hard to say where this surge has come from. Despite some fairly bad press and an apparently disorganized campaign, it's possible that a late advertising blitz by the Blanco campaign has nudged her along (she didn't do much television ads in the early runoff period for lack of funding), also she has spent the last two or three weeks attempting to tie Jindal's job as secretary of our state dept. or hospitals to the current health care crisis Louisiana is experiencing.
It's also possible that she's done it the good old fashioned way: stupmping it across the state.
Whatever the case, something appears to be working for the Blanco campaign right now. Kennedy's poll was dead accurate for the primary election, and now that he's got good numbers for Blanco, Democrats can at least pick their heads up. All signs point to heavy GOTV efforts by Democrats (although who knows if it will be enough) throughougt the state on Saturday so this news should brighten their day: We're supposed to have pretty great weather from the Sabine River to the Mississippi this weekend, that might not mean too much, but every little bit counts.
I'm not giving up hope for the Democrats in LA just yet, and I hope you folks don't either.