Black solidarity, higher turnout keys to Glover win

Turnout and racial solidarity won the Shreveport mayor’s race for black Democrat state Rep. Cedric Glover over white Republican Jerry Jones.

Heading into the contest, if one took registration numbers by race (whites with about a 1,500 lead), turnout statistics from the primary election (whites 48 percent, blacks 40 percent), and historic crossover voting in a white Republican vs. black Democrat matchup (7 percent of blacks vote for the Republican, 15 percent of whites vote for the Democrat), Jones would have won this race 51-49 percent.

But both turnout and crossover statistics changed dramatically in Glover’s favor. The fact that total turnout increased almost 10 percent over the primary election, in an environment where it seemed reduced turnout was more likely, indicates Glover’s camp did an outstanding job in getting out the vote, even as Jones seems to have incrementally increased his numbers there as well. In 13 almost all-black precincts, turnout increased by an average of 10.8 percent, while in 4 almost non-black precincts it increased just 7.6 percent.

The crossover totals cemented Glover’s win. While the average vote for Glover in the 4 precincts above was just about at historical averages, 14.7, almost no defections from Glover occurred in the 13 precincts above – averaging a stunning 98.6 percent or about 6 percentage points higher. This was confirmed by looking at the 6 city precincts where the racial split was 60-40 or closer. Given the racial averages in each, if the past pattern held, Jones should have gotten a proportion of the vote equal to 7 percent lower than the white proportion of the white/black total in the precinct. Instead, it was about 10 percent lower.

Probably every election observer outside of the Glover campaign did not think these changes in dynamics were possible. Glover proved all of us wrong.