A new poll in the State Treasurer’s race has John Schroder as the leading Republican candidate. Here are the topline numbers:

Derrick Edwards (D): 29%
John Schroder (R): 18%
Neil Riser (R): 11%
Angele Davis (R): 10%

Undecided: 34%

Unknown margin of error

The poll was done by the Remington Research Group out of Kansas City.

There are three big takeaways from the poll.

1. Despite spending next to nothing, Democrats are set to put a candidate in the runoff. The math for the Democrats is easy. Even if they run a yellow dog, they will get at least a third of the Louisiana electorate. The only Democrat running is the virtually unknown Derrick Edwards, therefore, his ticket to the runoff is likely punched despite raising and spending very little money.
2. John Schroder is the Republican leader so far, but…. John Schroder is liking his position in the poll. His media consultant Lionel Rainey even went so far to describe this lead as a “wide lead”, which you can argue is the case. To be frank, it shouldn’t be surprising that Schroder is leading, after all, he’s the only Republican candidate from the New Orleans area now that Julie Stokes dropped out of the race. But it would be a mistake to write off both Riser and Davis. Neil Riser still has a strong geographic base in north Louisiana and Angele Davis could start to consolidate the Baton Rouge area.
3. The large undecided number means this race is far from over. Over 1/3 of the electorate is still undecided. Of that number, Edwards will likely get around 5% and all the other minor candidates will grab another 1-2%. That leaves somewhere around 28-30% of remaining voters for the three major Republicans to battle for. To reach that large number of undecided you need to raise tons of money. Right now, John Schroder has the most money on hand but Neil Riser led the fundraising in the July reports and Angele Davis raised a nice chunk of change herself. This race is far from over and it will be won by the candidate who has enough resources to push their message.