This one was commissioned by Citizens for a New Louisiana, and the pollster is New Orleans’ Greg Rigamer, and you can pile it on top of a handful of other recent surveys which all show the same thing – Jeff Landry has a commanding lead in the Louisiana governor’s race, with Shawn Wilson hanging on to the other spot in the runoff by a comfortable margin despite underperforming as the only Democrat candidate, and all of the other Republicans stuck playing crabs-in-a-bucket in single digits.

Also interesting in this poll is how utterly disgusted the respondents were with Louisiana’s legislature, as 70 percent expressed disapproval of the antics from this spring’s legislative session.

From the press release about the poll…

Citizens for a New Louisiana is proud to release a statewide poll conducted July 6-10, which surveyed the Governor’s race and public opinion of the State Legislature. The poll was conducted by Greg Rigamer, with Bernie Pinsonat providing political analysis.

Jeff Landry continues to dominate the field, receiving 30% of those surveyed with democrat Shawn Wilson coming in second place with 28%. All other gubernatorial candidates polled in single digits.

70% of those surveyed believe that the state legislature was irresponsible in the preparation and passing of the state budget. Only 10% felt that they acted responsibly. Furthermore, 55% think the state is heading in the wrong direction compared to 24% who think it is in the right direction.

“This is a pretty standard question you see in most surveys, but these results are as negative as I’ve ever seen in a survey of Louisiana voters,” said Bernie Pinsonat.

In gauging the legislature itself, only one percent (1%) of voters said they would give an “A” grade.

“I also think that these numbers make October’s elections even more dramatic for incumbents who were looking for an easy ride,” said Pinsonat. “The road just got very bumpy,” he added.

“Based on this feedback, we can say without question that the public was disgusted by the entire budget process and results provided by the legislature,” said Michael Lunsford, Executive Director of Citizens for A New Louisiana.

The poll was conducted by live phone operators and consisted of 600 live interviews. It has a 4.0% margin of error and 95% confidence level. A slide deck summary of our survey is attached to this release. However, we’re also making available the complete topline and demographic crosstab reports on our website at https://www.NewLouisiana.org.

The toplines from the poll show an electorate which is seeing red at present.

By a 55-24 margin, voters think the state is on the wrong track. By a 69-10 margin they think the legislature was irresponsible with the budget. Asked to rate the Legislature’s performance as either excellent, very good, fair, not good or a failure, the numbers skewed horrendously to the negative, with just 1 percent saying excellent, 9 percent saying very good, 40 percent rating the legislature as fair, 26 percent saying not good and 21 percent calling them a failure.

Landry’s favorable-unfavorable number is even money at 39-39, though the 31 percent strong unfavorables outweigh the 21 percent strong favorables. Those numbers aren’t particularly new; Landry has been characterized as “divisive” by his opponents throughout the early stages of the race. But the other candidates don’t really seem to have much to show on this score, either; the poll found Sharon Hewitt underwater at 10-15, with 63 percent having never heard of her, Richard Nelson underwater at 5-10, with 76 percent “never heards,” John Schroder underwater at 20-21, and Stephen Waguespack underwater at 15-19.

Shawn Wilson is the only one of the candidates polled who had net favorable numbers at 23-13, but 53 percent had never heard of him and those voters are almost sure to break negative on him as the race takes shape.

And the horse-race numbers were…

• Landry: 30 percent
• Wilson: 28 percent
• Schroder: 6 percent
• Hunter Lundy: 5 percent
• Waguespack: 5 percent
• Hewitt: 4 percent
• Nelson: 1 percent

Some 20 percent said they were undecided, and of those, 30 percent were black voters.

The poll had Landry with a five-point advantage, 45-40, over Wilson in the runoff. That isn’t a particularly comfortable figure for Landry, but on the other hand Wilson is a black Democrat who ran the incompetent Department of Transportation and Development under John Bel Edwards, and 53 percent of the voters don’t know anything about him which gives Landry a wide-open opportunity to define him in the runoff as he wants.

Landry’s camp reported a very fat war chest this morning…

Today, Jeff Landry announced that he has $9 million cash on hand with $4.5 million raised from April 8 to July 7. In June, a historically difficult time to raise money, Jeff Landry raised a record amount of over $2 million.

“I am incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from people across our state. Louisiana deserves a government as good as her people,” said Jeff Landry. “With your continued support we will finally have safer communities, a great education system, and bring jobs and talent back home.”

And he just dropped a million bucks onto the state’s airwaves with a new TV ad campaign. The ad is a positive one meant to boost those favorables…

Digging ditches in a sugarcane field, serving our country, working nights as an officer, raising a family—I have walked in the very shoes of the people who struggle way more than they should in a state as blessed as this one. pic.twitter.com/dt3UszBTYJ

— Jeff Landry (@JeffLandry) July 12, 2023

Will this work? Well, so far it’s working. And the math just doesn’t seem to be there for the other candidates to vault over Landry and Wilson. That’s been our theory of the race since the field was set, and there’s simply no reason to believe otherwise. The Rigamer poll says all the same things the others have said.