Speaking of our buddy John Couvillon, whose polls of the 6th District and Senate races we posted about yesterday, here was an interesting email he circulated after analyzing the voting patterns from Saturday’s early voting results (Saturday was the first day of early voting in advance of the Dec. 6 runoffs)…
Republicans started off early voting on a good note yesterday:
(1) 49263 early voted yesterday (28% more than the early vote on the first day of primary early voting), and the racial breakdown was 72-26% white/black (it was 67-31% on Day 1 in the primary);
(2) The partisan breakdown was 46-41% Democrat/Republican (it was 54-33% Democrat/Republican after the first day of primary EVing)
(3) Given that we have two less days of early voting this time around, I’d like to have another day or two pass by before I make turnout projections, because I think the totals will be “front loaded” over three days (yesterday, Monday, and Tuesday).
And then Couvillon circulated another e-mail this morning after looking at the results from Monday…
Saturday was a good first day for the Republicans, and with a similar heavy volume yesterday, Republicans went “2 for 2”;.
(1) 45,097 early voted yesterday (52% more than the early vote on the second day of primary early voting), and the racial breakdown was 74-24% white/black (it was 67-31% on Day 2 in the primary);
(2) The partisan breakdown was 47-40% Democrat/Republican (it was 53-34% Democrat/Republican after the second day of primary EVing);
(3) To put this in perspective, black early vote volume on the second day was 18% higher than the primary, while the white vote was 36% higher. Similarly, Democratic turnout is 36% higher, Independent turnout is 46% higher, and Republican turnout is 80% higher. Republicans are definitely more enthusiastic about early voting this time around;
(4) From what I’ve seen after two days of early voting, I project a final early vote of 236K, and given that 16% of the November vote was early/absentee vote, that 236K represents an approximate voter turnout of 50%, or 1.477 million votes.
Those don’t look like Mary Landrieu’s voters. They look like Bill Cassidy’s voters. So far it looks like the black POE (percentage of electorate) for the Dec. 6 runoff might well be around 25 percent rather than the 31-32 percent Landrieu would have to have to be competitive.
If we’re looking at an electorate which is, say, 73 percent white and 25 percent black, and we apply the numbers from the Nov. 4 exit polls to the question (Landrieu got 94 percent of the black vote and 18 percent of the white vote in the primary, according to those exit polls), and you get a bad result if you’re for Mary.
94 percent of 25 percent of the electorate gives you 23.5 percent of the vote. And 18 percent of 73 percent of the electorate gives you 13.1 percent. Combine that and you get 36.6 percent. Let’s say Landrieu gets 70 percent of the rest of the vote (which is assumedly Hispanic and Asian), for an additional 1.4 percent.
Now she’s at 38. Which means Bill Cassidy is at 62. And it’s the worst electoral beating of an incumbent Senator since Republican James Glenn Beall was blown out of office by 25.6 points in Maryland in 1964 – fifth-worst for an incumbent in the history of American Senate elections.
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