Louisiana’s primaries (which include the Lt Governor’s race, a Republican Congressional runoff, and various local races) are now less than a week away. Early voting has concluded, although mail in/faxed ballots will still be accepted up until Friday. We kept track of the early voting numbers, and what we’ve noticed so far is as follows:

(1) While the volume of early voting was nearly three times that of the August Congressional primary (no surprise here, because you have a wider variety of races on the ballot this time), it still foreshadows another low turnout election next Saturday. To provide some context, 75K early voted for the October primary. This number is actually LOWER than the early vote total in the November 2007 statewide  runoff, where 91K early voted in that 26% turnout election. We see similarities between this Saturday’s election and the 2007 runoffs, because in both cases, you had a low wattage statewide race on the ballot (Bobby Jindal’s first primary victory took that race, and most voter interest, off the November ballot), combined with a mixture of multiparish and local races. All in all, we’d be surprised if statewide turnout topped 30%; at the present time, we think it’ll be 20-25%;

(2) While there was a good Republican early vote (the party breakdown was 53-37-10% Democrat/Republican/Independent) considering the population of registered voters, there was a respectable black percentage of early voters as well (24% of the early voters were black, which is higher than the 16-18% black percentage we typically see in recent early voting). We think this is the influence of local races, as we saw eye popping black early voting numbers in several smaller parishes, with 49% in Evangeline, 54% in Jackson, and 64% in Pointe Coupee. Curiously, the black early voting in the larger parishes tended to be light (with one exception: Orleans Parish), despite the fact there are serious black mayoral candidacies in Alexandria and Shreveport;

(3) The hard fought Republican runoff in the 3^rd Congressional district (“Bayou country” between New Iberia and St Bernard Parish) has certainly contributed to the Republican early voting in those parishes: Democrats only led in early voting 47-43% in those precincts, despite the fact that they have a 55-22% voter registration edge there;

(4) What impact do we see the early voting as having on the Lt Governor’s race Saturday ? Looking at the percent of registered voters who have already cast a ballot, overall, 2.6% of voters have already voted. In the parishes within the orbit of the Baton Rouge/New Orleans media market, 2.3% early voted, while west of the “Cypress Curtain” (explained here), early voters represented 2.9% of the early votes. Based on where we see the candidate strengths/weaknesses, the proportionately higher vote in the smaller parishes helps (on the Republican side) Sammy Kershaw, and to some extent, Roger Villere, provided that he can peel away some conservative/TEA Party votes in the smaller parishes from Kershaw. On the Democratic side, we think state Senator “Butch” Gautreaux will benefit some. In the larger parishes, the smaller proportion of early votes will probably cost Republican Jay Dardenne and Democrat Caroline Fayard, whose appeal we believe will be with “new Democrats” there.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that we are making somewhat of a big deal about the early vote volume, because when the Legislature essentially established “no fault” early voting several years ago, more and more people have chosen to early vote, so a constituency of 5-15% of the total vote is something a politician would be foolish to ignore – especially in a closely contested race (13% of those who voted in the August 2010 primary voted early: we believe the early voting percentage will be similar this Saturday). These early voting numbers are the ones that are typically reported on the TV screen several minutes after polls close at 8 PM.

As a final note, we have attached the partisan composition of the absentee vote in the October primary for each parish.

Absentee Vote - October 2010 primary