Welcome to the Runoff!: LA 2015 Liveblog

[Adam Griffin]

It was already going to be really close when factoring in the terrible situation of polls over-estimating Democrat support as of late and the notorious instance of practically every Southern undecided voter breaking for the Republican at the end of the day, but I think this has now cost Edwards the election.

People really underestimate the amount to which bigoted white Southerners loved to be wooed with dog-whistling politics. This particular issue just so happens to combine them all (racism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, etc). Rubes in Louisiana are just orgasming everywhere right now, now that they've been given in their eyes a concrete reason to oppose Edwards.

[Adam Griffin]

If Vitter loses and runs for reelection, LA Republicans would be stupid not to primary him. With Mitch Landrieu as a potential Dem candidate, the two of them in a runoff would be very competitive.

Primarying someone in a top 2 state can be a dangerous thing indeed.  Might be a good idea for Dems to recruit Cedric or Mitch plus a rural Dem legislator.  If Vitter, Angelle and Dardenne all run again, they could end up with a D vs. D runoff.

I think ideally, you'd want it to be 2 white Democrats, if only because 60-65% of LA's presidential year primary electorate is going to be African-American. You'd very likely end up with Richmond and a R winning the top two seats. We of course don't want to pretend that a black man can win a statewide federal contest in LA...

[Adam Griffin]

If Vitter wins, this would probably be the biggest polling failure of the last decade at least.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Get ready for history to be made!

[Adam Griffin]

If Vitter wins, this would probably be the biggest polling failure of the last decade at least.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Get ready for history to be made!

You really think he will lose?

I'm not confident at all that he'll win. It's the South.

[Adam Griffin]

I had completely missed mention of that part in the clip (literally the best lines of this campaign) where he says:

"Not as interesting as your date night, Senator"

"I give 100% to my wife, that's who I give 100% to: Senator, you ought to try it"

[Adam Griffin]

Why is AoS trying to be so edgy (literally) with its election map? That really isn't necessary.

[Adam Griffin]

AoS just called the race for JBE!

[Adam Griffin]

[Adam Griffin]

[Adam Griffin]

So, simple math suggests that JBE in the *current results* (mostly early vote) is winning at least 45% of the white vote thus far.

[Adam Griffin]

I'll be updating this throughout the night. Hopefully I didn't transpose any colors!

[Adam Griffin]

Vitter just announced in his concession speech that he for sure won't be running next year.

[Adam Griffin]

John Bel Edwards (D): 55.16% (606,889 votes)
David Vitter (R): 44.84% (493,349 votes)

3732 of 3945 Precincts Reporting   (94.60%)



With just a couple of precincts left to report, JBE is winning Jefferson Parish with 50.8% of the vote (LOL).

There are also multiple parishes where JBE is just barely losing (1-2 points) that have weakened the map's impact since last update.

[Adam Griffin]

You're welcome

[Adam Griffin]

5 out of 6?


Landrieu versus Edwards. Not really interesting, to be honest - fairly uniform improvement across most of the state for Edwards, an over-performance in his home region and an under-performance in the areas wrought by Katrina.

[Adam Griffin]

As far as turnout, I haven't seen anything published on the SOS site yet, but a good source purports that Edwards got 37% of whites with a 30% black electorate.

That would imply (with loose math here) that he literally got 100% (possibly even slightly more) of the black vote.

I'll admit that I'm a little disappointed if that's the case. I had been assuming that JBE only got 90% of the black vote and that blacks were 28% of the electorate (FTR, I did assume that was under-projected), which made me think JBE won about 43% of the white vote.


Also, just poured over the gov results I uploaded to Atlas and realized that JBE won a majority of the land/water area in LA, scoring victories in parishes that comprise 61,236 km2. This was pretty close in percentage terms (54.3%) to his percentage of the vote (56.1%). This would seem nearly unthinkable in the modern-day South.

[Adam Griffin]

[Adam Griffin]

According to The Nation, JBE received 87% of the black vote. This means that he got between 40-43% of the white vote.

[Adam Griffin]

Glorious work!

What the hell is wrong with those people in northern Avoyelles? You rarely would see a >90% R precinct in Georgia with Obama on the ballot, regardless of size.