Although the polls up to today’s runoff election are showing the Governor’s race as a dead heat, within the margin of error, I predict that the incumbent Democratic Governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, will win in a closely fought race. To a large extent the race is not just Republican versus Democrat, but there is also a national versus local dynamic (the GOP favouring the former, the Democrats emphasizing the latter); as well as a potential urban versus rural divide. The more traditional Louisiana divisions between the northern and southern sections of the state (the more Republican Protestant as opposed to the Catholic Democrat sections, respectively) will, similar to recent election cycles, not be the main point of divergence between the two candidates. That said, Governor Edwards has two paths forward to victory, both heavily dependent on urban votes, but one more reliant on politically marginal parishes in the north, the other, more likely scenario seeing a stronger showing in the south.

The first map shows the 2015 Governor’s race. A number of observers believe that the relatively unpopularity of the Republican finalist, David Vitter, heavily contributed to Governor Edwards’ win, with a 16% + vote swing between the jungle primary (where all candidates are on the same primary ballot for all voters) and the runoff election (where the top two candidates from the primary advance if no one receives 50% support in the first vote.) Governor Edwards received at least some support in each major geographic region of the state, even as it was concentrated in the more urban and southern areas of the state.

In the U.S. Presidential race in 2016, the following year, Democratic support was nearly 20 points lower than Governor Edward’s level of support. As can be seen on the map, Democratic support was reduced to urban strongholds in New Orleans, Shreveport and Baton Rouge; majority African-American parishes and a few remaining parishes around the lower Mississippi River valley.

One of the advantage of a jungle primary is voters effectively choose their candidates in the primary, which likely leads to a clearer discernment of final votes than a conventional primary, where people can vote in one party’s primary and vote for another party in the general. As can be seen, the Democrats are clearly stronger in Governor’s race this year than the Presidential election, which suggests that a number of Louisiana voters are considering the gubernatorial race independent of national considerations. Particularly pivotal are some of the ‘Florida’ parishes north of New Orleans, the environs around Baton Rouge as well as some of the delta/coastal parishes closer to New Orleans. The primary breakdown was nearly 52% for the Republicans and just over 47% for the Democrats (one independent also ran receiving less than a percentage point).

The other important factor is the actual breakdown of support between the candidates – Republican candidate (and businessman) Eddie Rispone won 27% over Republican Congressman Ralph Abraham’s 24%. Abraham, as the above map shows, did well in his 5th Congressional district, which comprises the north eastern and central portions of the state, including a number of ‘Florida’ parishes north of New Orleans. While no one expects a repeat of 2015, where then Senator David Vitter, hit with a prostitution scandal, had a great deal of difficulty securing the support of Republicans who did not support him in first round of voting, it would only take a small portion of the Abraham supporters to either back Edwards and/or abstain from voting in the runoff to secure Edwards’ lock on a second term. (Senator Vitter only won 40% of all Republican votes in the first round of voting in 2015, or 23% of the entire vote share, with one of his GOP first round opponents openly endorsing the Democrat in the runoff, while the other one opting not to endorse anyone. In the runoff Vitter ended up with only 44% of the vote, despite his party having won 60% overall vote share in the first round. This roughly translates to Vitter getting barely over half (!) of the Republican votes in the first round who did not vote for him initially.)

The fact that the combined Abraham/Rispone vote may be much more cohesive than the Vitter/GOP field in 2015, much higher than 50% but maybe not at 100% (that is, 100% of Abraham supporters vote for Rispone), makes the final two maps particularly insightful. If over 92% of Abraham supporters opt to vote Rispone, (which is certainly plausible) then Edwards will be saved by turnout from the heavily urban, largely southern parishes (all runoff elections in the past 40+ years have had a higher turnout in Louisiana). If Risponse gets less than 92% of Abraham supports, however, Governor Edwards is that much more likely assured of a win. Thus we will show the less likely scenario of what an Edwards victory may look like, showing more blue in north – not necessarily in Abraham’s 5th district but in the areas where Abraham votes would be very critical in determining whether particular parishes are coloured red or blue. (Note this map’s modelling is independent of a delta/south eastern increased turnout.)

The more likely path to Edward’s victory is through places like Jefferson Parish in the south, (ref. #13 on map) – a parish that may have at one point served as a genesis of sorts of the modern Louisiana GOP, but with population growth, demographic shifts and a decline in suburban GOP support, have trended more Democratic in recent elections. Jefferson actually is the second most populous parish in Louisiana after East Baton Rouge, and has almost 100,000 more people than Orleans (New Orleans), which suffered a marked decline after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Thus my final prediction of a 51-49% win for Governor Edwards assumes a high level of cohesion of the Abraham/Rispone vote (roughly 95%) from the first round. In addition to Jefferson, a number of other coastal/delta parishes in the ‘Florida’ and New Orleans regions are expected to turn a light shade of blue, sufficient enough for Governor Edwards to keep his job.

Three final thoughts:

• If Governor Edwards does win, it would be slightly ironic that the critical factor may not have been localizing the race so much as the Democrats’ keeping the race sufficiently local for the crossover voters; while the GOP’s aim to nationalize the race might have backfired for a certain number of voters, motivating a more urban/south eastern turnout in favour of the Democrats
• The quest to understand a key interest of mine, namely any potential revitalization of the old yellow dog/blue dog rural southern Democrat vote, remains elusive … Alabama in 2017 and Tennessee in 2018 decisively showed Democratic growth to be more urban/suburban rather than rural vote recapture, using that as a basis for Kentucky earlier this month I predicted that incumbent Republican governor Matt Bevin would be saved by the erstwhile Democratic eastern coal counties staying red, enough of them surprisingly flipped and gave the Democrat Andy Beshear a 5,000 vote margin for the win … so for Louisiana I am going slightly more nuanced than to predict in binary terms if Democrats can or can not recapture their former rural constituencies, and I am splitting the difference by regions, ironically along lines similar to the older divisions of southern and northern
• In all my predictions of elections in the US, UK and Canada, between Newfoundland and Labrador, Northern Ireland and Louisiana, these have to be some of the more complex regions where locality and history make a very decisive difference in predicting an outcome … if it truly can be predicted … perhaps Louisiana is less complex and byzantine than when it was described by A.J. Liebling decades ago (see recent article in New York Times) it goes without saying that I do not presume to know anywhere near all of the local dynamics, personalities and histories, but rather I use this as a broad basis point to move ahead in furthering my understanding of these truly fascinating regions. If Louisiana is not as complex in it’s conglomerations of political allegiances, it certainly is no less interesting today.