Bradley: serious or hypocritical Shreveport mayor candidate?

It appears that five months prior to Shreveport mayoral elections, the race card is being played in a decidedly ugly fashion by supporters of the only announced black Democrat in the contest.

Here’s an example of a flier going around town, and at least one supporter of television executive Ed Bradley admits to passing them around. Baruti Ajanaku (you can see where he’s coming from in his comments to the Shreveport City Council in 2002 over redistricting) claims he found a stack of them at the Pete Harris Café and liked them, so he started passing them out. Ajanaku has benefited monetarily from the Bradley campaign, for what he says was buying copies of his musical CD.

The flier essentially berates by name black politicians and activists who dare to show anything other than opposition to announced white Republican candidates for mayor, because to do so it implies means you cannot genuinely be “black” or be for black interests. A paid advertisement in the Shreveport Sun that ran recently also largely mimics the flier’s attitude and naming of names. Without these individuals specifically committing themselves and thus recommending to their supporters they may influence to the cause of a black candidate, these media essentially try to pressure them into acting like mind-numbed robots not permitted to use their intellects and judgments to make their best choice for a mayoral endorsement, or even not to allow them to associate with members of the political spectrum with whom they may or may not agree and/or support.

Naturally, this argument is idiocy at the highest level. Conservative policies promoted by the GOP have done and promise to do more for blacks, other ethnic minorities – and to be most precise, just people in general – in all areas of policy such as economic advancement, education, and freedom to worship, among others. Democrats, often black politicians themselves, generally have left a trail of broken promises to the black community and care about the community only insofar as it gets them votes to stay in power, which they manipulate to do this by using on it scare tactics totally divorced from logic and the real world. (And, of course, it was white Democrats who kept blacks in political servitude in the South for many decades.)

But, more disturbing is the attitude the Bradley campaign has taken concerning the flier. To date, Bradley’s campaign has done everything possible to downplay anything having to do with race. From a review of his campaign website you could not tell whether he is a Democrat, and without any pictures whether he is black (although there are pictures of him with prominent white supporters, as well as testimonials from them). Yet Bradley himself has refused to condemn the fliers or the ads.

This represents the crudest kind of politics. No doubt Bradley knows Shreveport’s history where blacks largely vote for black candidates and (to a lesser degree) whites for white ones. Trends still show that on election day the plurality of the electorate in Shreveport will be black. Media castigating blacks who dare to not oppose whites in order to create a kind of racial solidarity that can translate into a winning majority may be tactically beneficial, but also puts the campaign into serious jeopardy of hypocrisy.

Bradley can’t have it both ways – presenting a nonracial image to his campaign in the hopes of attracting white voters, yet tacitly permitting racist media to encourage racial solidarity among black voters that also could mine votes for him. In no uncertain terms he must condemn these media, lest he become known as a race hustler for political convenience rather than as a serious, thoughtful supplicant to the mayor’s job.

Couhig nod gives Nagin a strategy to win runoff

With defeated New Orleans candidate Rob Couhig endorsing the incumbent Ray Nagin, who finished the primary at 38 percent, 9 percent ahead of runner-up Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, a stroll through some post election statistics shows how Nagin can win the general election runoff.

Let’s assume that, partially as a result of the endorsement, a quarter of Couhig voters go for Nagin, a quarter pull the lever for Landrieu, and the other half are so disgusted that a status quo candidate will win that they roll off and don’t participate at all. A wash like this is to Nagin’s advantage, for two reasons: first, because he led the primary, every vote eliminated or that he can offset gets him closer to victory, all other things equal.

But, second and more intriguingly, as expected Couhig performed best in the precincts that turned out the most voters both in raw numbers and turnout percentage. If you divide precincts by the number of votes cast into quintiles, in the highest two Couhig averaged over 13 percent of the vote – precincts where Nagin’s advantage over Landrieu was only about 4 percent. It’s the bottom three quintiles, where Couhig averaged less than 6 percent, where Nagin really hammered Landrieu – on average about 26 percent.

This means if Nagin can fight with Landrieu to a draw for Couhig voters, he will have eliminated a major cache of votes for Landrieu to pick up that comprise much of the lowest-growth area for runoff voters. But merely negating this is not enough to provide a victory, because Nagin did best in the lowest vote population precincts (lowest quintile containing 45,175 registrants; the highest, 82,396). Nagin also must manufacture new votes for himself.

The highest-growth areas for potential votes, the lowest three quintiles, heavily favored Nagin in the primary. Not surprisingly, they also had the lowest participation rates, with Nagin’s margin growing as participation declined. Thus, any increased voting here (where the highest proportion of the electorate is black; 49.4 percent of the highest quintile is, but 83.6 percent of the lowest quintile is) will mean almost all of these new votes would accrue to Nagin.

(And a reason why these areas, which supported Nagin most heavily, had the lowest turnout was they disproportionately comprised the ravaged areas. Which means that these people least wanted a change in government even thought they were hit the worst by the storms, and Nagin is favored among them even more since as time marches on these voters increasingly comprise returnees coming into town through May 20.)

Nagin’s problem is that a large chunk of another defeated rival’s voter, Ron Forman’s, are likely to head Landrieu’s way, and they disproportionately comprised the top quintiles. Even if Nagin could draw 20 percent of that vote, Landrieu still would squeak by even given the scenario outlined above concerning Couhig’s voters. Thus, his strategy also must create new votes in the high-growth areas – not an easy job given they are the most likely ones to be displaced. But more evidence that there’s room for growth for him out there is among the absentee totals (largely that of displaced voters) he polled about the same as for all voters, while Landrieu actually polled 6 points higher.

Nagin’s best chance to win, therefore, is a two-pronged strategy of playing up on anti-Landrieu sentiments, hoping to drive Couhig voters away from Landrieu and either into Nagin’s arms or to the sidelines (and this should pick up some Forman voters, too), which blocks Landrieu vote growth in his areas of greatest potential gain, and concentrating on the low-turnout precincts, which hold the greatest growth potential to create new voters for him. Again, this isn’t going to be easy, but it is possible and represents Nagin’s best shot to win.

LA House puts politics ahead of improving education

Not much good has come out of the 2005 hurricane disasters in Louisiana, but an increased realization of the benefits of school vouchers, if not their implementation, can come from it – if enough politicians have the courage to embrace such a program.

HB 301 by state Rep. Tim Burns would create a state-subsidized voucher program benefiting students in Orleans Parish who did or would have attended schools deemed failing academically through state accountability standards or one of the school swept up into the Recovery District now running the vast majority of schools theoretically existing in Orleans Parish (even as many have failed to reopen). It would permit students essentially a free education at any school, including private ones, that meet certain stringent criteria.

Passage of this bill certainly would facilitate the repopulation of New Orleans; private schools have opened much more quickly than public ones in wake of the hurricanes, and undeniably have outperformed them for years. If displaced families with children that would qualify knew of this, they would have much greater incentive to return home.

And the advantages of improving standards thus results for students who both leave a school by voucher and those who stay, brought about by increased competition from increased access to nonpublic schools do not have to be confined to Orleans Parish. The bill explicitly terms its program “pilot” in nature, with it to last four years. Success logically would allow for its spread to the entire state.

This has been realized even by those whose allies have opposed voucher programs in the past. When a local official of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose national organization has gone on the record opposing voucher programs that expand choice for public school students, argues for them, the compelling nature of the argument certainly has taken hold.

Of course, the educational establishment, with voucher programs clearly illuminating its lack of competence, obfuscates the essential truth of them with specious arguments. When a school superintendent says something like “no one has done more for children of dysfunctional homes than public schools,” you now either this person is ignorant of the latest research in education or wants to cover up the fact that voucher programs (and other school choice programs) work for students of all demographic characteristics in order to insulate the greater effort a competing voucher program would present to his organization.

Unfortunately, while the bill initially received 52 votes (almost all in opposition being Democrats) in the House two-thirds affirmative or 70 were required. A motion again yesterday failed to get the requisite support, and the bill now languishes. It’s just another sign about how too many politicians in Louisiana would rather protect favored constituencies and fiefdoms that seriously entertain improving the quality of life in the state.

LA Senate's increased insurance regulation to drive up costs

The legacy of populism in Louisiana includes the belief that Louisiana should get people from other places to pay for the preferences enjoyed by Louisianans. We got another airing of that philosophy last week in the Senate Insurance Committee as it debated bills relating to insurance coverage and premiums.

One, SB 693 by state Sen. Robert Adley, would abolish the ability of insurance companies to file for rate increases up to ten percent without having to go in front of the gubernatorially-appointed Louisiana Insurance Rating Commission. All that does is improve the chances for politics to be injected into the process: all increases regardless of degree now must first face vetting by actuaries in the Department of Insurance and be authorized by it.

Informed that having the “flex-band” option attracted policy writers to the state (the increased competition from which lower rates), Adley dazzled those present with his ignorance of economics by stating, “Companies came, made money and are leaving again. They don't need us.” I wonder if that’s the attitude Adley has in his business and, if so, it’s a wonder he’s been in it so long.

Adley doesn’t understand that business can only make money when it has customers, so the more the better, but, more importantly, they want a customer base on which they can generate a profit because, guess what, if they can’t, firms go out of business. These companies will stay if they can get their rates adjusted to a level that accurately reflects the risk inherent in the properties they insure. The last thing the state needs are political appointees reviewing every rate increase and deciding not to grant them because people think insurance rates are going too high. What happens then is insurers simply stop coming to the state.

That’s already been happening, and that consequence was the subject of another bill, SB 651, by Sen. Reggie Dupre. This bill would remove the requirement that the state-owned insurer of last resort, the Louisiana Citizens’ Property Insurance Corporations charge premiums at least 10 percent above a price of a basket of premiums from private firms. This is to allow a greater bonding capacity and to prevent driving out of the state private firms.

But rather than having this greater stability and private insurance presence in the state, Dupre seemed to be more concerned about rapidly, but justifiably, escalating premiums and private insurers bailing out of the state than these issues. What he, nor Adley, seems to understand is that if Louisiana builds on its reputation of being business-unfriendly with the actions contemplated in their bills, that these insurers are going to leave the state, forcing the state-owned insurer to take on more and more properties at higher and higher rates.

And that’s bad news, because as the voice of reason on the committee Sen. Julie Quinn pointed out, the state-backed approach is nothing more than socialized insurance because deficits in it are made up by assessing additional premium costs on holders of private insurance. If the state won’t grant these increases to pass on to consumers, then these private insurers will leave the state, too.

The solution is simply to let the market prevail, which means getting over the idea that you can live anywhere you please without possibly paying exorbitant rates because of living in a risky area. It is not some Louisianans’ given rights to live wherever they want and expect ratepayers in the rest of the state or the remainder of the country to subsidize them (the same thing goes with levees and flood protection); nobody’s putting a gun to their heads and making them live in the places, either. If rates skyrocket, so be it; that’s the price some pay for living where they want, and it’s unfair to pass along so much of the responsibility for making that choice to others.

Fortunately, that bill did not make it out of committee but unfortunately Adley’s did, and not only that but then today squeaked through the entire Senate with some curious supporters – probable candidate for Insurance Commissioner James David Cain, announced candidate for Secretary of State Jay Dardenne, and stalwart fee-market supporter Max Malone. The House needs to stop this bill and instead consider reforms that reduces the state’s exposure to the insurance business and creates a friendlier environment that will cause private insurers to want to write policies in Louisiana.

Orleans turnout great news, even better for GOP

From the looks of comments given by a number of politicians and pundits, many fundamentally misunderstand the relationship between the results of the New Orleans mayor’s election primary and state elections in almost a year and a half.

First of all, answering the question about how many votes statewide Democrats will lose for 2007 I projected it two months ago in my paper presented at the Louisiana Political Science Association annual meeting: about 50,000. Roughly, about 25,000 Republican voters are projected to be out of Orleans and the state for the 2007 primary that otherwise would have been there without the hurricane disasters, but about 75,000 Democrat voters also are predicted to be absent. Whether that is significant is another matter.

In 2003, that margin still could have gotten Gov. Kathleen Blanco a narrow win over now-Rep. Bobby Jindal. However, for 2007 Blanco looks highly endangered while Jindal appears an early favorite to steamroll over all competitors for that office, so that margin wouldn’t matter then, either. Still, in close races Republicans have become advantaged, if the projections play out.

That these people don’t know about the 50,000-vote prediction is a minor shortcoming compared to their failure to properly analyze the meaning of the 36 percent turnout in the mayor’s race. Rather than interpreting this, in light of turnout nearly 10 percent higher for the 2002 contest, as a discouragement (and they are not the only ones to have made this mistake), in fact it is an exceptionally encouraging sign for upcoming Orleans elections.

Note that New Orleans’ population on Apr. 22 was unlikely to be more than half of its pre-Katrina level. Further, of that population only a portion is registered to vote – just about 60 percent if you take pre-election figures as accurate. But they aren’t – because so many registered voters really aren’t residents of New Orleans now who still appear on the rolls. Noting that there probably are disproportionately fewer children among the returnees and people marginally connected to the city who would have been unlikely to be registrants also disproportionately have not returned, perhaps 75 percent of those who have are registered voters. Estimating city population then at 218,000, this means 163,500 registrants were there on Apr. 22 – meaning turnout really was over 66 percent, a very healthy figure.

Admittedly, about 21,000 of those votes came from absentee or early voting. However, about half of that came from people opting for satellite, early voting in Orleans Parish, so even if we shave 10,000 off the final turnout figure (of 108,153), that’s still a very good 60 percent turnout of registered voters.

(It also points out the magnificent waste of money foisted upon the state by Democrats, principally at the insistence of Secretary of State Al Ater, to spend over $3 million extra beyond what the state and federal constitution required in voter contacts that got, using historical records, about 8,000 votes above normal – that’s about $375 per extra vote, or about what it would cost for an entire day for the state to provide skilled around the clock health care to a disabled person at home, at a time when almost 15,000 of them are stuck on a waiting list for state services. That is, the money Ater blew on the election could have served 25 such people for an entire year.)

Finally, just as many have misinterpreted the results as an indicator of lower future turnout, it also would be premature to say it is anti-incumbent. The May 20 general election can tell us more, but the fact that Mayor Ray Nagin pulled 38 percent of the vote I’m sure would have surprised many who now muse about any presumed anti-incumbent trend on the high side. Elections these days are rather candidate-specific, so it’s really the qualities of the incumbent and challengers that are the primary factors. It appears the majority of Orleans incumbents will survive, and, with Jindal out there, even without any hurricanes many analysts about now probably would have been writing concerning a tough reelection campaign ahead for Blanco.

America's form of government and its ideologies

Controversial issues of the day, at least as reflected in the local Gannett affiliate, sometimes come at you from unusual quarters in the little corner of the world known as the Shreveport metropolitan area. For the past couple of weeks, a debate has raged in that forum about just what we should call the form of government under which the United States operates, and then got extended to the meanings of ideological labels currently in use today.

As a public service to the (apparently larger than anybody anticipated) audience out there wanting clarification on this issue, and since explaining these things is what I do for a living, let me try to provide that clarity. All readers out there who were my American Government students at one time have heard this before; for the remainder, you won’t even have to pay tuition (or have the TOPS program pay it) to gain the same benefit.

The United States is a “representative democracy.” The following is not the only, but perhaps is the most widely accepted, definition within academia of the term, from Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: “an institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire power to decide by the means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” It doesn’t matter what these arrangements are (for example, a unicameral parliament vs. a bicameral legislature that competes with independent executive or judicial branches) or how power-holders are selected (for example, parliamentary seats awarded by proportion of vote received by parties in a direct popular election vs. winner-take-all single-member-district contests in a direct popular election for legislative seats), as long as they fit this definition.

To refine it further, two preconditions must exist for elections themselves, they must allow equal access for participation in the electoral process and the potential for genuine competition must exist. That is, government cannot prevent otherwise qualified individuals from participating in the process, nor can it introduce systematic bias into the results of the contests for power.

Thus, bringing up considerations of institutional arrangements or selections methods are moot: as long as the above definition and preconditions exist, it is a representative democracy. And, at the same time, it also is a “republic” (the term the Framers of the Constitution actually used was “republican form of government”). A republic is defined exactly as representative democracy is. So to use a term such as “representative republic,” for example, is redundant: “republic” itself is a synonym for “representative democracy” and republics themselves by definition must have elections meeting the above preconditions.

Perhaps more interestingly, one guest columnist extended the debate into the area of the predominant ideological labels in use in America today, liberal and conservative, arguing some kind of middle ground between the two kept the democratic system operating. However, he incorrectly assigned meanings to the labels, saying the balance was struck between the “freedom” stressed in liberalism and the “order” emphasized by conservatism.

As somebody who wrote an entire doctoral dissertation on how the American public infuses meanings into the two labels, let me offer a gentle correction. First, it is essential to understand that the defining difference between the labels in America (it differs elsewhere) is a dispute over the origins of inequality in society.

Conservatives believe that, when a society features minimal interference from government, differences that appear in the resources accrued by individuals are a result of natural, desirable processes. The easiest way to conceptualize this is in economic policy since it is easily quantifiable. The marketplace (refer to the Austrian school of economics here) distributes resources in proportion to the contributions that people make to society. In other words, wealthy people become so because the enterprises they engage in or oversee provide an enormous benefit to society as a whole, and thus they are appropriately rewarded, while the efforts of poor people contribute little to society’s overall well-being and consequentially they do not receive much for their efforts. Any interference in this process, i.e. predetermining outcomes by some institution such as government, while it may make some better off, in the aggregate makes more people worse off.

Liberals, by contrast, (again, using economic policy as an example) think that very disparate levels of wealth are not a natural process related to a person’s contribution to society, but rather represent the workings of some kind of error that has crept into the fabric of society. They perceive outcomes uncorrected more as a result of a lottery rigged by a “power elite” and thus need the corrective force of government to intervene, through policies such as progressive taxation and redistribution of wealth.

Thus, it is conservatives who place great emphasis on the concept of “freedom,” defined as non-interference by government in the competition of the distribution of resources in society. By contrast, liberalism stresses “equality,” defined as having outcomes of this competition conform ultimately to some set of standards determined by government (which theoretically is answerable to a majority of the people).

Modern liberals do not desire perfect equality, as in the communist state. But they do desire to limit people’s freedoms because it interferes in the state’s ability to impose equality – thus, a kind of imposition of “order,” meaning the columnist had the definitions, in a sense, exactly reversed.

He was right about one thing, however, that a representative democracy is a balance of the two, needing a minimum of both qualities. At a certain basic level, all people have equal rights; past that, government should not interfere to aid certain parties to the exclusion of others. It’s just that, due to their differing conceptions of the origins of inequality, the two ideologies would assign very different legitimacies to different amounts of government intervention necessary in the pursuit of fulfilling equal rights, or where the balance is. Liberals try to draw it more to the side of equality, while conservatives seek to have it marked closer to freedom.

That’s the civics lesson for today; until next time, when the usual insightful analysis of state and local politics resumes.

Reject flawed property protection bill, philosophy

Everybody says they’re for the state being unable to expropriate land to turn over to private developers for the purposes of economic development, but which of the two approaches currently advancing in the Louisiana Legislature will more assuredly make this reality?

SB 1 by state Sen. Joe McPherson would write into the Louisiana Constitution a prohibition on most kinds of takings for this purpose. By contrast, state Rep. Glenn Ansardi’s HB 30 would amend the Constitution to give the state a broad power to expropriate for these purposes but allow for the state to limit this power on a general or case-by-case basis. Ansardi, however, also offers up HB 1164 which would by statute limit this power along the lines of SB 1 (and, actually, a little more restrictive in specifics although it also gives the state a power to take property it declares “blighted”).

In short, by getting a two-thirds vote in each chamber and a majority vote subsequently by the people, SB 1 would allow for only a few cases where governments could do this; expanding this power would require another constitutional amendment. HB 30 would continue to allow governments to take land for a “public purpose” which can include economic development of the sort of transferring land from one private entity to another, through the same two-thirds Legislative majority and popular simple majority. HB 1164 would duplicate largely SB 1 except it would be passed into law by a simple majority in each chamber and with the governor’s signature (or override by two-thirds vote in each chamber if vetoed) – and thus can be changed by the same combination. Obtaining these majorities and the governor’s assent for passages seem almost certain.

So, note where the better protection of property lays – SB 1. To weaken it would require a huge degree of consensus. By contrast, if HB 30 passes, it validates in the Constitution the interpretation of expropriation as set forth in last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision. While HB 1164 would undo that, its statutory base would allow for easier stripping of protections by its repeal or alteration.

This is because its author wants government to have a general power available to expropriate for economic development purposes in transfer of property from one private entity to another. This is because he believes “that economic development is a good thing. This notion that economic development is something sinister or evil has to be erased.”

But Ansardi fails to understand that with this bill he promotes economic development by government action – which is not the purpose of government nor does it optimally accomplish economic growth. He does not recognize that government does not grow economies – people and firms do, so long as government minimizes its interference in their voluntary market activities. Government’s role is to create an infrastructure to assist in the making of voluntary transactions, not to step in and force such transactions when it thinks it best.

The state’s citizens need the strongest protection possible against government transgressing its proper function. As the facts behind the U.S. Supreme Court case illustrates, politicians in search of actions by them that appear like they are making the economy grow get too tempted to stop themselves from an improper use of government to achieve those questionable ends. For that reason, SB 1 or a bill like it must be supported while HB 30 cannot continue its legislative journey.

Dishonest critics fault honest Orleans elections

From the mouths of carpetbagger idiots, we have Jesse Jackson spouting nonsense, if not outright falsehoods, about the 2006 New Orleans primary elections:

“This election was held under protest in flagrant violation of the Voting Rights Act.”
Wrong: as recently as last week a federal court upheld the bend-over-backwards approach of the state to the election as more than satisfying any legal requirements.

“Voter turnout was 20 percent lower than the mayoral election of four years ago.”
Wrong: turnout this election was only about 10 points lower, understandable given the hurricane disasters. Compare 2002 turnout to those voting this time and those registered right before the election.

“Just 106,000 out of 296,000 eligible voters voted.”
Wrong: the total was 108,348, making for a reasonably healthy 36 percent turnout.

“Inadequate and onerous absentee ballot provisions left Katrina survivors around the country on an uneven playing field.”
Wrong: check this link made available by the state and see just how little brainpower and/or education is required to be able to follow these simple instructions.

“The New Orleans election was held with secret voter rolls.”
Wrong: any group of 25 or more persons may inspect the voting rolls in any parish in the state and have access to most of the information of most of the people registered. In fact, you by yourself can even inspect the name and address of every person who asked for an absentee ballot here.

Understand that Jackson and his ilk wish to create a myth that something was wrong with the election because they want to use that as a springboard to create any legal challenges they like if results don’t match their desires. Reasonable, thinking people will realize just how ridiculous that claim is.

Nagin mayoral win not beyond realm of reality

Conventional wisdom gives Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu the edge in the general election runoff for New Orleans mayor against incumbent Ray Nagin on May 20. Months ago, I didn’t think Nagin had a chance after his subpar performance in dealing with Hurricane Katrina. But don’t count out Nagin yet.

A superficial look at the election returns points to Landrieu defeating his fellow Democrat. Even if Nagin led Landrieu by 9 points, with only 38 percent of the primary vote that usually does not bode well for an incumbent. Further, it is reasonable to assume that Landrieu is advantaged by the fact that the vast majority of Nagin’s voters appear to have been black while many whites voters probably voted for people who did not make the runoff. Observe how precincts vote proportions played out, broken down into four categories of low black population (0-25 percent), medium black population (25-70 percent), high black population (70-90 percent), and very high black population (90-100 percent):

Low: Ron Forman, 32.33 percent; Mitch Landrieu, 31.65 percent; Rob Couhig, 21.89 percent, Ray Nagin, 8.76 percent
Medium: Nagin, 33.89; Landrieu 30.62; Forman, 18.25; Couhig, 10.06
High: Nagin, 59.41; Landrieu 24.91; Forman, 7.02; Couhig, 3.20
Very high: Nagin, 69.81; Landrieu 21.67; Forman, 2.21; Couhig, 0.70

It’s logical to assume that these whites would be much more likely to Landrieu. But that may not be correct because they have another choice – not to vote at all. In the 2002 contest, while about 1 percent fewer blacks chose to vote in the general election than primary election, 2.5 percent of white rolled off. But this figure could be much higher since in 2002 Nagin was considered a tolerable vote for white conservatives given his business background and sharp contrast to other candidates, without any quality Republican running in the primary.

However, this time out, a considerable portion of people who supported Couhig may declare a pox on all houses, given their disappointment in Nagin and long-time distrust of Landrieu. In fact, when post-election statistics become available it may happen that white turnout actually was higher this year than 2002 because Couhig offered a real choice. With a candidate like him not on the runoff ballot, these voters (almost all white) may write off the whole election and not vote for, as one might first think, for Landrieu.

The other dynamic at work is another 28 days will pass while a disproportionate part of those returning to the city are black. My conjecture that the city’s population would be about 53.7 percent black in Orleans on Apr. 22 may well be within a fraction of the correct total, if we take anecdotal reports as accurate. By May 20, my projections have another registered about 1,500 white Democrats and about 1,000 Republicans returning, but also around 3,500 more black Democrats.

So, it’s possible to envision the following scenario. Let’s say Couhig’s (and marginal candidate Peggy Wilson’s) vote represent those who want a real choice in the contest and see Landrieu and Nagin as echoes of each other, so none of them vote. Let’s also assume that the rolloff difference in 2002 of 1.5 percent more for whites than blacks represents a portion of the vote for Forman, but that the remainder will vote for Landrieu. Also, let’s assume the Rev. Tom Watson’s supporters faithfully vote for Nagin while other candidates’ split and net out. Finally, let’s say that of new voters on the ground on May 20, Nagin picks up an extra 1,000 compared to Landrieu (assuming half of the Democrats returning vote, blacks for Nagin, whites for Landrieu, and the Republicans opt out entirely).

Taking the primary numbers, Nagin led Landrieu by about 10,000. Landrieu would pick up around 18,000 from Forman, minus rolloff of several hundred. Adding Watson’s votes would make Landrieu’s margin about up 6,000, and the “new” voters puts it down to 5,000. Keep in mind that almost all of Forman’s vote here is assumed to go to Nagin. Thus, if Nagin can capture just 15 percent, of Forman’s vote, he can win. That’s not impossible, given Nagin was getting some percentage of the white vote and doing well among blacks.

Change the assumption about Couhig’s and Wilson’s votes and have some of them show up and vote for Landrieu makes Nagin’s task harder. We can assume most who voted for Forman would vote for Landrieu because they wanted change from Nagin, and so that portion becomes a harder nut for Nagin to crack as more for those Republican-candidate voters slide into Landrieu columns.

Still, Nagin winning is not an unreasonable expectation. It’s going to depend on what the Couhig and Wilson voters do, and who all comes back to the city in the next month, above and beyond the mobilization efforts of the campaigns. And that proposition was hard to believe when the elections were ordered a couple of months ago.

Some surprises from New Orleans mayoral results

Let’s see how this blog’s favorite political scientist, me, did in terms of predicting yesterday’s New Orleans mayor’s race, both in terms of how many and who turned out, and who finished where.

Predicted finish: Landrieu (34.2 percent) and Nagin (34.1 percent), fairly close to each other
Actual finish: Nagin (38.36 percent) and Landrieu (29.12 percent)

In aggregate I was almost dead on, but Nagin did a bit better than the polls were predicting and Landrieu a little worse. Let’s see if we can figure out why.

Total absentee/early votes predicted: 27,834
Actual absentee/early votes cast: 21,330

Looks like it didn’t come from satellite or absentee voting – in fact, Nagin outpolled Landrieu by about the same margin as the aggregate. Looking at the next set of figures, it tells us I seriously underpredicted the number of votes cast in Orleans yesterday:

Predicted votes cast: 84,929
Total votes cast: 108,153

That’s a turnout, given the latest known figures, of 36.27 percent. (It also means that Times-Picayune reporter Brian Thenevot wins the best prediction award between us, as I had it around 29 percent and he figured it would be around 34 percent – still low, however). I had projected around 56,000 would come from the ground, but it turned out to be almost 87,000.

This tells us three possible dynamics were at work: I underprojected (1) the number of people returned to the city to be ready to vote, or (2) the get-out-the-vote effort to haul people into the city on election day, or (3) the actual participation rate of those who had returned to the city. Unfortunately, it will be a few days before I can tell for sure until the post-election statistics are released from the state. This also may tell us why Nagin did better and Landrieu worse than their polling. One hypothesis is that there were more black voters in the city than the 53.7 percent I projected.

Total percentage of votes for Democrats predicted: 75 percent
Total percentage of votes for Democrats actual: 89.47 percent

In large part, you could say that was due to shadow Republican Ron Forman’s running as a Democrat. A good chuck of his vote probably would have gone to Republican Rob Couhig if he had not run, or a good portion of his 17 percent would have stuck with him running as a Republican. Still, a couple of months ago it transpires if anything I was too cautious in explaining that Democrats would easily get a majority of votes and that at least half of the electorate would be black, even as most other analysts kept musing whether a Republican could win because they thought a majority of the electorate would be white.

Let’s wait a few days for the post-election report to see where this is going on May 20. But, to draw two interesting points from this contest, for one, Couhig probably was not a spoiler for Forman. Add their totals and Forman is still a bit short from Landrieu. Even throwing in Republican Peggy Wilson’s totals won’t get him there. And, speaking of Wilson, it’s a sign your political future is nonexistent when you can’t even outpoll Kimberly Williamson Butler.