The tumultuous U.S. Senate Republican runoff between Treas. John Fleming and Rep. Julia Letlow ended not much differently than where it had started from the primary election.
After that, it looked as if Letlow could cruise to victory. Leading Fleming in percent of the vote 45-28, that left her with a sizeable advantage not needing to pick up much relative support to notch a runoff win. But a few factors should have raised alarms in her camp.
First, there would be a chunk of voters who showed up simply to boot incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy. A half-baked flipflop on the question of convicting (then former) GOP Pres. Donald Trump as well as subsequent votes backing a big-spending Democrat agenda soured especially conservative voters on him, who would make up disproportionately the party primary electorate. Further, they disproportionately likely voted for Letlow because she was seen as the more moderate of the two, but they had no real commitment to her and with a good portion of the state having nothing but the runoff on the ballot, many of these voters would disappear from the polls, giving Fleming an advantage.
Then, on the other side of the coin, there were Cassidy voters disenchanted with the pair who would sit it out. Similarly, this dynamic would work in Fleming’s favor as these voters would become unavailable for Letlow to grab for the win, who likely disproportionately would have voted for her.
Also, because ideological fervor is related positively to turnout, Letlow likely had more marginal voters than did Fleming in the primary, since she disproportionately attracted less-ideologically conservative voters. Thus, fewer Fleming voters would be expected to wash away in a runoff, again one that for many voters featured no other races on the ballot, than with those for Letlow.
Finally, what other items appeared on ballots did likely convey a bit of an advantage to Letlow. Runoffs for the southeast Louisiana seats for the Public Service Commission and Board of Education and Secondary Education probably ended up as a wash, with the more moderate Republicans of Orleans Parish balanced by more conservative ones of St. Tammany, but hot ballot measures in East Baton Rouge probably gave the edge to her, given a higher proportion of moderate Republicans there where Cassidy had squeaked out a narrow in over her in the primary.
Early voting numbers indicated these factors at play. Compared to the almost 260,000 who voted in the early period of the primary, of which around 106,000 were Republicans and 39,000 essentially no party (who could choose to vote in one party’s primary and runoff), only nearly 172,000 made it to the runoff, with just about half Republicans and about 13 percent basically no party (but in a hopeful sign for Letlow, East Baton Rouge GOP turnout dropped less proportionally than statewide).
The question then became whether these factors were of sufficient strength to get Fleming across the finish line first. There is a history in state elections of instances where differential turnouts in runoffs doomed a significant frontrunner. Perhaps the most extreme came in the 2003 Senate District 2 race where in an all-Democrat field incumbent Jon Johnson led with 49 percent of the vote with Ann Duplessis next at 36 percent, but with runoff turnout increasing by 20 percent (egged on by a hot gubernatorial runoff) Duplessis nipped Johnson. At the statewide level, the blanket primary result in 1986 that saw Republican Rep. Henson Moore leading with 44 percent over Democrat Rep. John Breaux at 38 percent saw Breaux win the runoff 53-47 – but this also featured a turnout boost of 15 percent.
In some senses, this election featured uncharted waters with what appears to be a significant turnout drop off. The primary had about 32 percent turnout among Republicans, but that looked to drop by about a third, which could have been expected to help Fleming.
That didn’t. The results, with Letlow triumphing 57-43, came down to two factors. First, Letlow did a better job of holding her geographical base. She romped in what was her past and current congressional district, while it was much tighter for Fleming in his old district of a decade past. Second, Letlow won up and down the Mississippi River (which also includes part of her district), with the interesting exceptions of Orleans and East Baton Rouge where she barely won, and into the boot and Acadiana. As interesting, she won handily in St. Tammany. In a larger sense, Fleming did best in the less-populated western half of the state, but Letlow topped the eastern half, minus the near-draws in Orleans and East Baton Rouge.
In the final analysis, Fleming improved more than Letlow, but by not nearly as much as necessary to win. His appeal as a consistent, full-spectrum conservative, muddied by a relentlessly distorted negative campaign against him, as well as his campaign that focused on a few narrow issues necessarily to differentiate between the candidates that wasn’t enough to sway more casual voters, simply didn’t create enough urgency for more activist voters to push the pad for him.
This result means for the most part Louisiana will see little change in the voting record of this senator post as Letlow surely will win this fall — not as conservative as its new senior senator Republican John Kennedy, but perhaps more loyal than Cassidy to the agenda of Trump as Letlow had won his endorsement.
No comments:
Post a Comment