Louisiana will select its next senator Saturday in a special runoff election, and current poll numbers reveal another disappointment for Democrats this election season.
Republican Senate candidate John Kennedy currently leads Democratic challenger Foster Campbell in the polls. The latest Emerson College poll shows Kennedy carrying 51 percent of the vote, while Campbell trails by 18 percent, earning 33 percent of the vote in the poll.
Both candidates are on a downward trend, with Kennedy earning 60 percent at the start of November, and Campbell earning 40 percent of the vote in a recent Tulane University poll.
The initial election results were consistent with the polling in the race, according to statistics site 538, meaning that it’s very likely that polling is a good indicator for the statewide runoff election.
538 conducted an analysis of past runoffs, and how they compare with the first round of election results. There have been four runoff elections in Louisiana since 1986, and Democrats generally do much better in runoffs than they do in the first round.
Democrats earned a 10 percent lead over the Republicans in 1986, but only earned 5.6 percent more than the Republican in the runoff. In 1996, the Democrats overcame an 11-point deficit in the first round to win the runoff election with a .3 percent lead.
Democrats also increased their numbers in the 2002 and 2014 runoff elections. Republicans still won overall in 2014, when their opponents lost by 12 percentage points in the first round election.
That means, given the electoral history of the state, it is very unlikely for Campbell to overtake Kennedy, who earned an eight-point lead in the first round election, obtaining 25 percent of the vote compared to Campbell’s 17.5 percent.
538 noted that none of the adjoining Deep South states, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, or South Carolina have Democratic senators, and the population votes primarily along racial lines, according to 538’s analysis. More voters are white, who tend to vote Republican in the state.
One of the reasons Louisiana is so important is because the race would give Republicans a 52-seat majority headed into the crucial 2018 mid-term elections. Safe Republican seats are primarily up for grabs during that year, and an additional seat would give Republicans some wiggle room to maintain a majority in the next election cycle.
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