North LA racially polarized voting perhaps waning

A couple of interesting theories about the nature of politics emerged from Shreveport’s recently-concluded mayor’s race, especially in context of other north Louisiana major cities. These deserve further scrutiny.

Banging around the rumor mill is that Democrat state Sen. Greg Tarver lost, despite his many decades in elected offices and longstanding alliances in a majority-black electorate against white Republican Tom Arceneaux, because he didn’t try hard enough, His real goal, so goes the argument, was to deny Democrat Mayor Adrian Perkins reelection, and once he had done so with Perkins failing to make the runoff, he checked out, explaining his lackluster performance.

It's an intuitively simple explanation as to why Arceneaux won in fairly convincing fashion a contest by the numbers he had no business winning. It also has a lot of problems, beginning with Tarver treating the contest from start to finish very seriously.

If not so jacked about winning, then why did he bother to pull in around $122,000 in the period just before and after the general election (and spend nearly $100,000)? Or that according to special reports after that period (required when donations come from certain sources or above certain amounts) filed almost every day until election day he pulled in around $215,000 more, with tens of thousands coming from Republican state senators? Or that he took the time to address an unconnected and unregistered political action committee’s circulation of his past marital difficulties? Or to have an event touting endorsements by state and local officials, including Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards?

This doesn’t correspond to behavior of someone just mailing it in. More credulous is the idea that what sunk Tarver was a maturation of area politics away from black solidarity in voting for black Democrats in a majority-black electorate. While conventional wisdom postulates that unique circumstances about Tarver – controversy surrounding him – soured enough black voters so that they wouldn’t show up or could do the unthinkable in pushing the button for Arceneaux, perhaps this result was indicative of an evolution.

One point in favor of this interpretation extends back to the 2018, when Perkins defeated the incumbent Democrat Ollie Tyler. Anecdotal evidence proposed that Perkins drew a decent share of Republican voters, especially in the runoff although that pitted a pair of black Democrats, so by definition racial crossover voting had to occur. In essence, 2018 might have been a forerunner of 2022 in racial crossover voting, except instead of significant white Republican voting for a black Democrat back then, things now flipped to significant black Democrat voting for a white Republican.

In the larger picture, 2018 might have started a sweeping change across north Louisiana continued by 2020 in Monroe where some black crossover voting elected independent Friday Ellis to become mayor and then earlier this year when white Democrat Jacques Roy reclaimed Alexandria’s highest office, in both case from a black Democrat incumbent. However, if black crossover voting was minimal in Shreveport in 2018, that increases the chances that the following results more were due to idiosyncratic factors specific to the black Democrats running, where the evolution hypothesis would need data in 2024 and beyond for confirmation.

To determine this, an analysis similar to that performed on 2022 voting and precinct demographic data can be performed. In 2018, Perkins and Tyler led a pair of Republicans, Jim Taliaferro and Lee Savage, into the runoff who combined would have led both and consequently knocked out Tyler. Thus, in the general election we can gauge, by looking at precincts favorable to Republicans (defined as once with more than half of registrants Republican and no/other party) and those to black Democrats (defined as at least 70 percent registration of that race and label), how well Republicans did in Democrat-inclined precincts and how well black Democrats performed in Republican-friendly (mostly white registrants) precincts.

Since 1994 in Shreveport elections, white Republicans attract few black voters, on the order of one to seven percent, while black Democrats do somewhat better representing more ideologically leftist whites at about 15 percent of white voters. Significantly higher totals would indicate a higher level of racial crossover voting.

Reviewing 2018 general election data among whole precincts (a few are split between the city and Caddo Parish), in the 16 precincts that would be favorable to Republicans, Perkins received on average 27 percent of the vote, demonstrating significant white crossover voting. However, in the 24 precincts that would be favorable to Democrats, the Republicans gathered less than three percent of the vote, meaning little black crossover voting happened.

In four years, Perkins wore out his welcome in favorable Republican precincts, garnering less than four percent of the vote, which casts doubt on the hypothesis. In 2018, the newcomer was seen as a blank slate and some Republicans were willing to take a chance on him rather than Republicans as they typically had. With fuller information about him in 2022, they reverted to their traditional pattern. Yet black Democrats showed almost no willingness to cross over in favor of the Republican candidates in either general election, demonstrated in that Arceneaux scored just about the same as the pair of Republicans in 2018 in these precincts.

But he won the runoff because he then pumped up that proportion close to 15 percent, which again suggests tactical voting. So, it’s a stretch to argue that blacks have acquired the same level of enthusiasm in voting for white conservatives as conservatives have in voting for black Democrats when quality candidates they typically vote for are available, but there now does appear a greater willingness to vote tactically for white Republicans even with a quality black Democrat available, depending upon candidate factors. That does present an avenue for evolution in north Louisiana that may be confirmed when Monrovians hit the polls in 2024.