[EL] Postscript on Louisiana elections: Turnout & more

[Rob Richie]

As a follow-up to my note on Friday, I wanted to share some initial analysis
of Louisiana's Cajun primary system in action -- after reviewing statewide
offices and state senate races.

* Turnout in the governor's race was 31.4% of voter-eligible population
(using Mike McDonald's 2010 numbers). That's down from 61.1% in the 2008
presidential race.

* Turnout was under 30% in the four other statewide contested offices. The
closest one was for Lieutenant Governor between Republicans, but it had
somewhat lower turnout than lopsided races for Commissioners of Insurance
and of Agriculture/Forestry, which had Democrats in the race

* There were 39 state senate races:
- 20  had no contest, leading to 5 D winners and 15 R winners (only one
candidate filed, and Louisiana doesn't allow write-ins).
- 11 more races were contested only by one party: 3 D's and 8 R's
- 8 contests had a R-D, only 3 of which were classic D-R races where both
party's candidates earned more than 30% of the vote
- 8 contests were won on the first round with a candidate receiving less
than 58%, including only 4 races won by a margin of less than 10%
- four races will go to runoffs, all of which will be between two candidates
of same party
- there were no third party candidates or independents in any of these races
(although some did file for governor and state house of rep races)

* Race and party
- All seven statewide races were won by Republicans, with the best
Democratic percentage being 32.5%
- After the runoffs, the senate will be 24-15 for Republicans, with all 24
Republicans white and 10 of Democrats black
- Gov. Bobby Jindal is Asian American. He was the only Asian candidate to
run for state office. There was one Latino house candidate.

 Rob

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Respect for Every Vote and Every Voice"

Rob Richie
Executive Director

FairVote
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
Takoma Park, MD 20912
www.fairvote.org  <http://www.fairvote.org> rr at fairvote.org
(301) 270-4616

Please support FairVote through action and tax-deductible donations -- see
http://fairvote.org/donate. For federal employees, please consider  a gift
to us through the Combined Federal Campaign (FairVote's  CFC number is
10132.) Thank you!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20111023/a4c80e0c/attachment.html>