The Louisiana election results are in, and this gives me the opportunity to contrast two reports. The first is from a DLCC (Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee) mailing:
Last night, Democrats won in multiple Louisiana legislative districts that went for Trump in 2016, including one district where Trump won by over 43 points.
But the elections are nowhere near over. Dozens of other Democrats in toss-up districts had impressive results that are taking them to runoff elections on November 16.
An upbeat report, it seems. Here’s The Hill’s report:
Louisiana voters took a significant step to the right on Saturday, as Republicans notched wins up and down the ballot, giving their party an outside chance of sweeping to power just ahead of a crucial redistricting cycle that could cement their control of the state for years to come.
Amid record turnout for what is usually a sleepy off-year, irregular election, Louisiana Republicans locked up enough seats in the state Senate to amount to a super majority. The party came within seven seats of winning a super majority in the state House, too, with eight runoff elections to come in November.
Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) easily led the field of candidates running for the state’s top office, but he did not win a majority of the vote, which would have allowed him to avoid the Nov. 16 runoff.
Instead, his two leading opponents — businessman Eddie Rispone (R) and Rep. Ralph Abraham (R) — captured a combined 52 percent of the vote. That gives Rispone, who finished about 4 percentage points ahead of Abraham, a path to win the runoff.
The lesson here is to be careful of mono-sourcing your news.
These results should raise some questions for the Democrats. Is the Louisiana result due to endogenous or exogenous reasons? Was Trump really influential? Towards the latter question, prior to the election Edwards was polling 48%, and achieved 47%, well within the margin of error, so perhaps he had little influence.
The Hill’s report does have one clue in it:
Edwards grabbed about 91 percent of the African American vote, according to Couvillon’s estimates, a solid and necessary performance for any Democrat who hopes to win statewide office in a conservative Southern state.
But worryingly for the Democratic incumbent, African Americans made up a smaller percentage of the overall electorate than they have in past elections.
That suggests Edwards is not inspiring the black community to vote, although it’s hardly dispositive.
