As of this morning, we now have five full days of early voting completed, with 253,000 people casting ballots. (Another 106,000 voters are expected to show up between this morning and Saturday, when early voting concludes, according to John Couvillon, president of JMC Analytics and Polling.)
That’s a heck of a leap compared to the first five days of the 2015 gubernatorial cycle, when 148,000 early voters participated in the process. This was certainly the cycle where we saw a vast majority of professionally-run campaigns catering to early voters. Gov. John Bel Edwards’ campaign, for example, produced an entire newspaper insert to promote early voting and its candidate. Couvillon and others have also noted that Louisiana’s early voting process is coinciding with a push by Democrats in the U.S. House to initiate impeachment hearings into the administration of President Donald Trump. Could such national political news be motivating early voting in the Bayou State?
“It’s an off-the-wall theory,” Couvillon said, adding that GOP voters are nonetheless outpacing Democrats in early voting here so far, as compared to 2015. “Republicans are fired up.”
Based on early voting alone, that appears to be true. (Anecdotally, reports suggest that the GOP has an improved ground game lined up compared to past cycles.) So far, the early voting split is 43 percent Democrat to 42 percent Republican, compared to 51 percent and 36 percent respectively during the same period in 2015.
While the ratio of white to black voters (74-24) has remained relatively consistent when compared to four years ago (73-26), the party ratio has clearly not. This indicates, that for the fifth consecutive day, the number of white democrats and white independents voting in this election is down from 2015. (With things at the top of the ticket looking as close as they are, this all could end up mattering.)
But will this early voting uptick correlate to any increase in overall turnout? Some pollsters are suggesting total results will be depressed come Election Day. Donor fatigue is already showing up on the fundraising side of things, so perhaps — hopefully not — voter fatigue won’t be far behind.
They said it: “My hairspray is starting to wear off.”—State Rep. Lance Harris, after a long day of campaigning, in The Monroe News-Star
“I love PAR’s description of our state constitution: ‘A lengthy throng of regulatory minutia.’ And a description of proposed amendments: ‘Arcane.’ That’s got to be Robert Travis Scott at work!” —USA Today Louisiana reporter Greg Hilburn, via Twitter.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
