It’s a three-way race, that much is for sure, but right now there isn’t enough conclusive polling data to say whether John Fleming, Julia Letlow or Bill Cassidy is leading the GOP primary for Louisiana’s Senate seat Cassidy currently holds.

We can’t even say who’s in third.

Fleming’s camp points to their own polling, plus an independent poll from a couple of weeks ago which had him in a big lead over Letlow with Cassidy trailing far behind…

A JMC Analytics poll, paid for by the Fleming campaign and conducted Feb. 14–16 among 645 likely Republican primary voters, shows Fleming at 26%, Letlow at 25%, and Cassidy at 22%.

Cassidy dismissed the numbers.

“John Fleming paid for the poll,” Cassidy said. “And so that poll shows what John wants it to show.”

Fleming acknowledged funding the poll but pointed to a separate survey from Quantus Insights, a conservative-leaning firm, showing him at 34.2%, Letlow at 24.6%, and Cassidy at 19.8%.

“Even the independent polls actually show me in better shape than my own polls do,” Fleming said. “So paying for the poll has nothing to do with it.”

But Cassidy’s camp is touting their own poll which says he’s in first place…

Public Opinion Strategies, surveying for the Cassidy campaign (3/7-10; 500 LA likely Republican primary voters; live interview), sees the Senator holding a 35-24-21% advantage over Rep. Letlow and Mr. Fleming. Testing a Cassidy-Letlow runoff, the incumbent would hold only a 45-43% edge. The Cassidy-Fleming runoff possibility was not tested, but it would not be surprising to see a similar preference division.

And Team Letlow has their own polling which says something different altogether…

A new poll on the Louisiana Senate Republican primary race shows Congresswoman Julia Letlow leading the field in the Louisiana Senate primary race in a survey that also measured the strength of President Trump’s endorsement of Letlow.

The poll was conducted by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates on March 11-12 and included 600 likely Republican voters for the May 16 primary. It has a 4% margin of error.

Letlow’s campaign promoted the poll, but said she didn’t commission the survey even though Fabrizio is her campaign polling firm. USA Today Network has reached out to the firm to see who commissioned the survey.

Letlow led the survey with 27% followed by incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy with 26% and state Treasurer John Fleming with 19% and 28% undecided.

It also showed Letlow beating Cassidy in a hypothetical head-to-head runoff election 46% to 34%.

Once those surveyed were informed of Trump’s endorsement of Letlow, her lead expanded with 48% followed by Cassidy at 19% and Fleming at 14%.

Which one of these widely disparate poll results is accurate? It’s impossible to say.

A few weeks ago, Gallup – long seen as the gold standard of American polling organizations – confessed that where they used to make just three calls to generate a polling response, it now takes 20 calls. So when Gallup gets a five percent response rate, imagine the challenge faced by lesser-known or unbranded polling organizations. And when the public default is not to answer calls from pollsters or to treat those calls as spam amid the dozen other spam calls typical Americans receive in a day, it becomes a reality that there is a specific type of person who responds to polling.

And that specific type of person isn’t typical of the American voter.

In other words, no one really knows who’s winning this race.

You’d expect Cassidy, who by some reports has already spent $6 million between his campaign and PACs, most of it to tout his conservative record and fealty to President Trump (yes, that despite Cassidy’s unforgettable vote for Trump’s impeachment in January 2021), and to attack Letlow as a liberal despite the fact her voting record is identical to Cassidy’s, to make the runoff. But  you’d also expect him to struggle against his runoff opponent, whether it’s Letlow or Fleming. Cassidy is the incumbent and no poll is showing him above 35, which is a good indication that most Republican voters in Louisiana don’t want to re-elect him.

Letlow, of course, has Trump’s endorsement. It’s the reason she’s in the race to begin with, and it’s a good defense to Cassidy’s ideological attacks. She’s been hit on having been late reporting stock transactions, something she’s addressed (whether those accusations did any damage or whether it’s been repaired is tough to say), and Fleming’s camp is hitting her on carbon capture; Letlow hasn’t taken a public position on the issue but she’s engaged to Baton Rouge lobbyist Kevin Ainsworth, who has lobbied on behalf of oil industry companies seeking to build carbon capture projects.

We’ve had a million posts on carbon capture here at The Hayride. I’m not convinced it’s an issue that will move a lot of votes.

And then there’s Fleming, the oldest candidate of the three and the one with the best conservative record. He’s also the least well-funded of the three, which gives his candidacy something of an insurgent look. Before Letlow got into the race, Fleming was claiming to be its frontrunner and had polling to prove it. Now the picture is more muddled, and the question becomes whether Fleming has the resources to compete with the better-funded Cassidy and Letlow, albeit in front of an electorate which probably skews his way ideologically.

In other words, to give the reader the short version, nobody knows anything about how this race is going or what’s going to happen in May when the voters go to the polls.