There is an excellent post by Taniel highlighting and breaking down the early voting statistics for the Governors race in Louisiana, it can be found here;
I especially like and appreciate the pains that Taniel goes to to separate a simple statistical breakdown from a projection of the actual outcome of the election on Saturday. Due to the similarities in polling leading up to election day, there can be a natural inclination to either compare this to, or try to differentiate it from the earlier surprise results in KY, where the Democrat was heavily favored and got clobbered.
But, in my humble opinion, there is one big difference between them that has nothing to do with polling. In KY, a moderately popular Governor was leaving to a wide open race, voters went to the polls for popularity. Once again, the knee jerk reactions of traditional “red state voters” kicked in, and large numbers of them voted to take away their own Medicaid and health insurance benefits. Go figure, although it is also possible that the good citizens of KY know bullshit when they smell it, and that there was no real chance of their benefits being stolen away. The story is different in LA..
Once again, in Louisiana we have a Governor being term limited out of office. But the big difference is that KY exiting Governor Steve Bashear is very popular, if he were not term limited he probably could have been re-elected to a third term. Exiting Governor bobby Jindal is almost universally reviled. His popularity ratings are right down there with Ebola and toilet bugs. Hell, he might be looking up at toilet bugs. In a state that depends on tourism for a large part of it’s income, and that was almost brought to it’s knees by the double whammy of the Deep Horizon spill and Hurricane Katrina, the last thing that they need when tourism is on the rise, and people are starting to stream back to the Gulf Coast and New Orleans for both pleasure travel and business purposes, the last thing that they need is disruption. Even the radical Republican legislature backed off on the idea of a “Religious Freedom Law”, realizing the disastrous effect it would have on tourism and business. This was most certainly not going to deter Born Again Bobby. Hours after the legislature waked and buried the law, Jindal signed an almost exact draft into law as an executive order.
The results were swift and predictable. IBM almost immediately canceled a scheduled June 22 ribbon cutting ceremony at a brand new National Service Center in Baton Rouge in protest, sending an open letter to Jindal that the executive order was in direct violation of their corporate values of equality and inclusion. Other businesses publicly protested as well, progressive corporations nationwide began cancelling events planned in Louisiana, there was talk of opting out of LA. for the NCAA basketball championships, and LGBT organizations large and small began calling for a boycott of leisure or business travel to Louisiana in protest.
This is the big difference between Louisiana and Kentucky. Louisiana residents were not happy with their Governor abandoning pressing local issues to chase off after a fools gold Quixotic quest for the Republican Presidential nomination. And while you can get people to vote against their best interest in cases where their “interests” are something that they could have, but don’t have right now, they take a slightly different view when reservations and contracts for income that they do have right now disappear due to a decision from your government. Businesses, including those owned by large Republican donors, are furious with the fallout from his lame brained Executive Order. Add to that the shaky personal morals and professional history of Vitter, and the fact that he has gone out of his way to alienate even his own parties supporters, and you have a recipe for a very bitter brew indeed. I mean, after all, how poisonous do you have to be to have a competitor from your own party turn around and publicly endorse the guy from the other party to kick your ass in the general election?!?
Once again, I commend Taniel for his cautioning not to let raw numbers deceive your thinking into what the eventual outcome of an election will be. But I did want to take this opportunity to point out the differences, despite the similarities, of the widely disparate differences in the arc and trajectory in these two separate races.
Thanks as always for reading!