Data For Progress Poll Narrowly Favors John Bel Edwards For Reelection

Sean McElwee, co-founder - Data for Progress
Colin McAuliffe, co-founder - Data for Progress
Ryan O’Donnell, Senior Adviser - Data for Progress
Henry Hoglund, Senior Polling Adviser - Data for Progress

Data for Progress polled a sample of 1,434 Likely Voters in the state of Louisiana ahead of Saturday’s run-off for the Governor’s seat. We project a victory for Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards with a margin of 50.2 percent for the Governor against 49.8 percent for his Republican opponent, businessmen Eddie Rispone. Our poll finds the incumbent Governor John Bel Edwards is narrowly favored to hold the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge, but that the race is essentially a toss-up. The Governor has a narrow advantage due to strong early turnout, an overall surge in turnout that continues the swing in the suburbs towards the Democrats, and a changed electorate from the primary.

A note of caution – our margin of victory is very close. A 0.4 percent margin is well within any given margin of error, and small changes in turnout numbers and composition could swing this race either way. Our polling suggests, however, that Governor Edwards has stimulated high turnout, higher than his initial 2015 election, and that a surge in African American voters and an overall shift in the suburbs towards the Governor will help carry him to a narrow victory over his Republican opponent.

The early vote in Louisiana was larger for the runoff election than for the primary in October. In fact, it was the largest EV turnout ever for a non-presidential race in the history of Louisiana elections. African Americans, a critical part of any successful Deep South Democratic coalition, comprised 31% of the EV electorate, which is much better than African American turnout was for the primary, where Governor Edwards garnered about 47 percent of the overall vote. Part of the weakness in the overall vote in the primary was due to poor African American turnout (only 27 percent in the primary), and last week’s elections in Mississippi showed the importance of the black vote to the Deep Southern Democrats.

Another prerequisite for an Edwards victory is strong turnout in the suburbs. In particular, watch for some of the suburbs around New Orleans, Shreveport, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge. If John Bel Edwards is running up the score in those cities and their suburbs, and holding down his losses elsewhere to less than 2 to 1, the Governor is on track to win. Specifically, keep an eye on the parishes north of Lake Pontchartain, St. Tammany Parish among them, to see if Edwards is keeping his margins from getting too low.

Finally, given the high EV turnout, we anticipate a general voter universe that is much larger than that of the primary. Historically, primary electorates and run-off electorates vary from each other by about 20 percent, which strongly implies it would be a mistake to model turnout solely off of the October Primary. We could very well see a general turnout surge like we saw in Kentucky, particularly with Trump’s nationalization of the race into another referendum on his presidency. This extra turnout could swing both ways, but it is definitely helpful that Edwards has banked at least some of his spare turnout based on the high EV turnout.

If Edwards does pull it off, part of the reason will be the expansion of Medicaid he signed into law, which is popular in LA. Data For Progress also surveyed the popularity of Medicaid Expansion and another aspect of health care reform, drug negotiation, and found both to be popular with likely voters in Saturday’s election.

Methodology:

Between October 29th and November 14th, 2019, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,434 registered voters matched to the Louisiana voter file using a text-to-web survey from respondents from a commercial voter file. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, urbanicity, marital status, race, income, voting history and other relevant factors using multilevel regression and poststratification. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ± 2.6.

Question Wording

Medicaid - “Recently, Louisiana expanded its Medicaid program to give health care coverage to more people. This increased the number of people getting insurance from Medicaid by 560,000 people, reduced the uninsured rate by 50%, and created new healthcare jobs. To pay for the expansion, the state pays 10% of the cost and the federal government pays the rest. Do you support or oppose the state’s decision to expand its Medicaid program?”

Phama - “Would you support or oppose a policy barring pharmaceutical companies from increasing the prices of drugs more than the increase in the prices of other goods and services each year?”