Louisiana Nov 16, 2019 Run-Off Election Results thread

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I'd say Edwards probably wants at least 55% in Jefferson to feel good about his chances.

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Is anyone going to answer my question?

It's hard to tell, since we don't know whether the early vote will be more Democratic or Republican-friendly than the Election Day vote. It was more Republican-friendly in the primary, thus results got more favorable for Edwards as more came in, but we can't be sure whether or not that will be the case this time around.

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Edwards is at nearly 60% in Jefferson, but I'm assuming that's all early vote.

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It's totally going to come down to how much more friendly to Rispone the ED vote is. In short, we don't know yet.

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A few parishes are starting to count their ED vote, and it doesn't look like the ED is significantly more friendly for Rispone thus far. Edwards' numbers have gone down very slightly from the EV in some, but up a bit in others.

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Jefferson is starting to count its ED vote, and Edwards is holding fairly steady at 59%. If he can stay in the high 50s there, that's very good news for him.

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I'm actually not sure that the ED is going to be better for Rispone. He actually seems to be losing ground in some parishes.

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While we need more of the vote before drawing any conclusions, the vote so far does suggest that a small percentage of Abraham voters did switch to Edwards.

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Don't waste your time, guys. Edwards could win by 30 and he'd be saying it's good news for Trump.

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Finally, the Orleans EV came in. Still not quite over, but it's not looking good for Rispone.

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Edwards is at 56.8% in Jefferson, with only 8 precincts left.

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Yeah, ready to say that Edwards has this, though his margin probably doesn't exceed 2 or 3%.

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Jefferson is done. Edwards got exactly 57% of the vote there. Pretty insane trend there from 2015.

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Can Edwards net another 4K from the remaining Baton Rouge votes? If he does, Democrats will have won the overall vote for the 2019 gubernatorial races.

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Can Edwards net another 4K from the remaining Baton Rouge votes? If he does, Democrats will have won the overall vote for the 2019 gubernatorial races.

There probably isn't much more than 4K total votes left there, so very unlikely.

Yeah, probably not, but the overall total will be exceptionally close.

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Good thing that JBE pulled through, but those rural 2015 -> 2019 trends do not bode well for a far-left candidate like Warren or Sanders next year.

Obama was not wrong yesterday:

It needs more of a centrist, or Trump wins again powered by these rural voters.

Pretty much any Democrat is going to get clobbered in the rural areas, and is going to rely on the cities/suburbs to win. This idea that "swing voters" care about ideology, or that a large number of Republicans and "moderates" will vote for Biden with a spring in their step but flock to Trump if Warren is the nominee (while Democratic/progressive turnout isn't stronger for Warren) is ludicrous. Democrats win by being authentic and standing by their principles, not simply being "moderate."

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Good thing that JBE pulled through, but those rural 2015 -> 2019 trends do not bode well for a far-left candidate like Warren or Sanders next year.

Obama was not wrong yesterday:

It needs more of a centrist, or Trump wins again powered by these rural voters.

Pretty much any Democrat is going to get clobbered in the rural areas, and is going to rely on the cities/suburbs to win. This idea that "swing voters" care about ideology, or that a large number of Republicans and "moderates" will vote for Biden with a spring in their step but flock to Trump if Warren is the nominee (while Democratic/progressive turnout isn't stronger for Warren) is ludicrous. Democrats win by being authentic and standing by their principles, not simply being "moderate."

Show me at least one "real progressive" Democrat winning statewide in Louisiana. Or Mississippi. Or Alabama. Idiocy.When needed (to prevent victory of worse candidate) "principles" may be temporerily thrown into basket. Politics is "an art of compromise", not a competition who is more "principled"...

In a national election? No Democrat is winning those states. And yes, thank you for Moderate Herosplaining politics to an "idiot" like me (funny, I thought partisans were the unreasonable ones who threw insults around), but "compromise" without having a larger goal or principle in mind is a meaningless buzzword and accomplishes nothing. Again, I'm not saying being liberal is an electoral golden ticket either, since that's just as silly as claiming that being "moderate" magically makes one more electable, I'm saying authenticity is the key. Whether a Democrat is moderate or more left-leaning, they need to come across as truly believing in what they're selling.

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A “progressive” could not win even a state election like this is his point, and he’s right.

You are massively downplaying the significance of ideology and massively overplaying the importance of “authenticity.” Yes Democrats are gonna lose most rural areas these days, but as has been pointed out in this thread, margins matter a LOT. There is an ENORMOUS difference between losing them 60-40 and 80-20, and that can make or break an election. So you can’t just handwave away the potential Democratic voters there, or more moderate voters in the suburbs for that matter.

And you can’t pretend they would vote for AOC or something, in any election, because she’s “authentic,” whatever the hell that means exactly. Yes it certainly helps to be perceived as likable and relatable, or for your opponent to be the opposite — that’s in part how Beshear won despite running on a fairly liberal platform, including pro-choice. But it’s just naive to say that a candidate perceived as far left like AOC would have fared just as well as JBE in Louisiana, or Beshear in Kentucky. There are certain issues swing voters in these states won’t budge on, no matter how “authentic” or not the candidates are. And a lot of times it’s more than even just issues; a perception as an extreme ideologue can hurt a candidate even if it’s not really accurate.

It needs to keep being said: Despite the fact that left-wing internet sees Hillary as all but a Republican, reality is most Americans saw her as more extreme than Trump. For Democrats to win we have to break that perception, not double down on it. Yes, she wasn’t seen as “authentic” either. But the thing is, Joe Biden comes off as both more authentic AND more moderate than Hillary to middle America. So maybe it’s time to start taking those polls showing him crushing Trump seriously and stop straining the math to explain how ackshually Bernie/Warren/Buttigieg/whoever would do better. And it’s definitely time for deluded egomaniacs like Bloomberg and Patrick to stop entering the race thinking they’re gonna save the party when it’s just fine without them.

Funny, I don't recall mentioning AOC or calling Hillary a Republican in my post at all. I do wish people would stop interpreting my saying that authenticity/likeability is a more important factor when it comes to winning elections than ideology as "so you think AOC would've done just as well if not better than Edwards!!!!!" Whether Democrats lose rural counties 65-35 or 80-20 (thanks, as it turns out I actually do understand math, believe it or not) is not going to come down primarily to ideology. It's going to come down to who voters feel is on "their side" or who "gets them."

Maybe Biden does have what it takes. I'm not totally sold on that idea, but I could see him winning. I think that while there could be some difference in exactly how Warren or Sanders would win, but I think that their path to victory would be connecting to voters and selling their ideas as helping people in general. They could win as well. Yes, there are very conservative voters who will vote for Trump over them. If you truly believe that swaths of these voters will consider voting for Biden over Trump instead, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

Voters can be surprisingly flexible and forgiving to candidates that they like or connect with on a personal level. Just look at how conservatives voted for Trump without reluctance. While I don't doubt that Sanders and Warren would lose badly in Kentucky and Louisiana (and so would Biden), that doesn't mean that they can't win over voters that Clinton couldn't in states like Michigan and Wisconsin, even if those voters are somewhat to their right. Clinton didn't lose because she was "too far left", that's just revisionist history, since she was nominated because many saw her as the "electable" candidate. (It is just as silly to say that she was "too centrist" or "too much like a Republican", for the record.) She lost because voters saw her as robotic, a career politician through and through, and someone who would change their opinion based on polling numbers, and who would throw people under the bus as soon as she got elected. Was that characterization completely fair? No, but her difficulty expressing authenticity was a very real problem for her.

Now it's my turn to say it again: If Democrats run a purely anti-Trump campaign, or do not run on a clear message of their own and appear wishy-washy and inconsistent, Trump wins. I could say more, but we're clearly going to have to agree to disagree. You may know local Kentucky politics better than I do, but nationally Democrats have gone down this path before and have bought into the usual narratives before as well. It doesn't tend to end well.

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Whether Democrats lose rural counties 65-35 or 80-20 (thanks, as it turns out I actually do understand math, believe it or not) is not going to come down primarily to ideology. It's going to come down to who voters feel is on "their side" or who "gets them."

How exactly do you think JBE got ordinary Republican voters to think he's on their side? If you think his pro-life and pro-gun positions didn't benefit him enormously you aren't paying enough attention to what motivates conservative voters.

Voters can be surprisingly flexible and forgiving to candidates that they like or connect with on a personal level. Just look at how conservatives voted for Trump without reluctance. While I don't doubt that Sanders and Warren would lose badly in Kentucky and Louisiana (and so would Biden), that doesn't mean that they can't win over voters that Clinton couldn't in states like Michigan and Wisconsin, even if those voters are somewhat to their right. Clinton didn't lose because she was "too far left", that's just revisionist history, since she was nominated because many saw her as the "electable" candidate. (It is just as silly to say that she was "too centrist" or "too much like a Republican", for the record.) She lost because voters saw her as robotic, a career politician through and through, and someone who would change their opinion based on polling numbers, and who would throw people under the bus as soon as she got elected. Was that characterization completely fair? No, but her difficulty expressing authenticity was a very real problem for her.

Now it's my turn to say it again: If Democrats run a purely anti-Trump campaign, or do not run on a clear message of their own and appear wishy-washy and inconsistent, Trump wins. I could say more, but we're clearly going to have to agree to disagree. You may know local Kentucky politics better than I do, but nationally Democrats have gone down this path before and have bought into the usual narratives before as well. It doesn't tend to end well.

Where is your proof on any of this? Everything you're saying is conjecture -- meanwhile, Wildman's points are based in hundreds of opinion polls as well as a huge set of election results, including last night. That half of voters thought Hillary was more liberal than they were, and only 35% said Trump was more conservative is not irrelevant at all. Biden has led Trump by larger margins than Sanders/Warren in 99% of polls taken. Those recent NYT/Siena polls hint that the difference could put one of them over the top and sink the others.

There's something to be said about how authenticity is earned by politicians from voters, but to act like you can take any positions you want as a Democrat and expect to get the same results... well, it's not based in anything we've ever seen.

More recent polls show Sanders and Warren getting very close to what Biden gets, and doing better than Buttigieg, who is considered more "moderate" than they are. And why are some polls showing Warren with a higher favorability rating than Biden? Either way, early polls can't really tell us much, and the poll you showed is misleading, since it basically suggests that voters didn't think of Trump as "conservative" in the same way as previous Republican candidates. There's also a difference between a candidate being more extreme and being seen as more extreme.

Edwards is pro-life and less left-wing on guns, that's true. It probably did help him a bit specifically in Louisiana, but that doesn't mean it's the only reason he won or the biggest reason he won, or that it will give a boost to literally any Democrat in literally any race. By the way, he also expanded Medicaid, put in protections for the LGBTQ, and ran on reducing the prison population and raising teacher pay, so there are just as many, if not more ways in which he isn't particularly "moderate." Sure, Democrats can't run on literally any position, but I never said that. I believe the proper Atlas terminology for that would be "strawman." It depends just as much on how Democrats sell their ideas.

People keep claiming that election results back up the notion that Democrats have to move to the center, but all I've ever seen is cherry-picking, like pointing out how the brave moderate blue dog Nelson outperformed the heathen socialist Gillum by an enormous 0.3%. How about how Sherrod Brown won by 7% two years after Ted Strickland lost by 22%? How did a lesbian progressive win by 11% in Wisconsin? While some more centrist Democrats won in 2018, there were also solidly progressive House and Senate candidates who overperformed Clinton by a similar margin, so I think the House results simply show that fewer progressive Democrats won primaries, rather than that "moderate" Democrats are inherently more "electable."

I've beaten this subject to death, and I think I want to move on, but I'll just say that election results and polls are kind of like tea leaves, and different people will read them in different ways to promote a narrative. Whether Biden or Warren is the nominee and whether they win or lose, people who want Democrats to be centrist will find a way to argue that the results support their argument, and those who want the Democrats to be further left will also find a way to make the results support their argument.