Early voting statistics from Caddo Parish show Republican sheriff candidate former Shreveport City Councilor John Nickelson well may be doing what he has to in order to win this weekend’s election, but it might not be enough.
Nickelson and Democrat former city Chief Administrative Office Henry Whitehorn have locked horns for the position now twice, with the pair emerging from the field in the general election where Nickleson had led Whitehorn 45 percent to 35 percent, and Republican candidates overall receiving 53 percent. Then almost five weeks later famously they virtually tied, with the certified total showing Whitehorn up by one vote. However, a rubber match became necessary when courts found too many irregularities in election conduct to make the actual result indeterminate.
Whitehorn closed the gap because turnout differential swung in his favor, where Republican-favoring precinct turnout fell 5.3 percent while Democrat-favoring precinct turnout increased 1.2 percent, even as overall turnout dropped 2.4 percent. If Nickelson could mitigate each of those changes even slightly, he would win, and increasing base turnout seemed the way to do it based upon the trends had gone adversely for him as a result of falling turnout.
At first glance, early voting statistics from the election trifecta could indicate that turnout jump. In the general election, 15,300 voted early, slightly more via absentee (numbers which also include ballots received by post a few days after the election and counted then, but which were mailed thus filled out prior to election day) than in person, with a white/black ratio of 1.35:1 and a Democrat/Republican ratio of 1.45:1. In the runoff, 15,485 voted early with very slightly more absentee than in person, with a white/black ratio of 1.19:1 and a Democrat/Republican ratio of 1.51:1.
Between these, early voting did seem to indicate on a proportional basis that Whitehorn would run down Nickelson. The portion of the early electorate of Democrats and blacks, who for the most part vote for Democrats (and black Democrats like Whitehorn in particular), both increased, and aggregate election data at the precinct level appears correlated with that.
However, the numbers also show the proportionality effect – that early voting is a pre-echo of the election as a whole – can’t account for the raw numbers involved. Overall turnout dropped 2.4 points or in raw numbers 6 percent, but early voting increased by 1.2 percent. This points to a substitution effect – that early voting cannibalizes election day voting in a way not exactly proportional to election returns as a whole, or that to some degree it is unrepresentative of what the overall results will be.
These covary. In an election with perfect proportionality, early voting numbers will match exactly the overall numbers in turnout percentage, partisan ratio, and race ratio. Introduce the substitution effect with its implicit assumption that early voters are unrepresentative of the electorate’s final composition, and you cannot have perfect proportionality, and as the substitution effect grows, proportionality’s influence wanes as it hurtles towards greater imperfection.
One test to see whether the implicit assumption holds is to review election day ratios. For the general election, the white/black ratio was 1.57:1, and the Democrat/Republican ratio was 1.11:1. For the runoff, respectively these were 1.20:1 and 1.38:1.
To summarize a comparison of early voting versus election day voting for each contest, in the general election, blacks and Democrats – who are often the same – were more likely to vote early. But in the runoff, the racial ratio was practically the same for each period while fewer Democrats proportionally voted on election day. And to summarize across election days voting, on Nov. 18 relatively more blacks and Democrats turned out than on Oct. 14.
The raw numbers show this was a matter of GOP voters rolling off and additional Democrats popping up. Overall Republican voter turnout plunged 12.6 percent while Democrats saw a 3.6 percent boost. As well, black voters swelled by 6.8 percent while whites dropped 14.2 percent.
Taking all of this into consideration, firstly it appears white conservative Democrats disproportionately tended to pass on the runoff, who likely would have voted for Nickelson. The small portion of white liberal Democrats – key to an election where the electorate has a slight white plurality over blacks and aggregate precinct results showed whites very likely to vote for Nickelson and blacks even more likely to vote for Whitehorn – seems to have held steady in turnout for Whitehorn.
Secondly, without Republican Gov. Jeff Landry at the top of the ticket, Nickelson turnout struggled while Whitehorn didn’t suffer the same fallout, a reflection that Democrats largely had conceded statewide elections and so marginal voters weren’t there in the general election to roll off in the runoff, but also give credit to Whitehorn’s campaign that a few hundred more Democrats and blacks – again, mostly the same people – turned out for the runoff.
And perhaps related to these, thirdly, Nickelson somewhat underperformed in rural precincts. Reviewing the runoff, of the six rural precincts of at least 85 percent white registrants, in four there was a lower turnout than in the parish overall of which in three he also had a lower proportion of the vote than that of white registrants. And in the other two where that was the reverse, one had higher turnout and one had lower. Perhaps this had to do in part with the lingering aftermath of a controversial proposal during his time on the Council that would have criminalized legal gun owners for leaving firearms visible in their vehicles.
Finally, a higher turnout would appear to be in Nickelson’s favor. His voters seem to have rolled off disproportionately as turnout declined, so logically they would be the most likely entrants by returning to the fold as a cause of turnout going higher.
As to what the early voting numbers mean whether turnout will change and to whose advantage, while absentee ballots remain around the same level as in the previous two elections, in person voting skyrocketed, adding nearly 10,000 and close to 125 percent more than in the runoff, to total 25,075 (again, a few absentee ballots will trickle in over the next several days to push this higher). The racial ratio was 1.07:1 and the partisan ratio was 1.51:1. The raw numbers show an increase of whites over the runoff of 53 percent and of blacks 71 percent, and an increase of Democrats by 56 percent and of Republicans by 62 percent.
This means a slightly higher turnout among likely Whitehorn supporters, but if a substitution effect is particularly strong in his favor that might be to Nickelson’s advantage. There appears to be a particularly large one this time, as absentee ballots are right around the levels of the previous elections, indicating that a large portion of the in person gain comes from people who would have voted this Saturday – and why not, since this is the third go around and the candidates have been at it for months with few other races to distract voters, who were well aware of who they wanted before the runoff, so they might as well get it over with. While some observers dare to suggest substantial turnout gains over the previous pair because of the huge early voting numbers (over half of the previous pair’s totals), much of that will subside on Saturday, leaving it likely at best marginally higher than the general election’s.
That means not a lot of new voters from the runoff who would help Nickelson. He has to hope who’s showing up additionally in the early voting disproportionately are Whitehorn supporters. But even if that’s not much the case, that he trailed by just a single runoff vote means even the most marginal improvement pushes him across the finish line. Yet on the theory that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, these early voting numbers won’t substitute perfectly and therefore favor Whitehorn.
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