March 24 is the date of Louisiana’s Presidential primary. While there are some local races on the ballot as well, we are limiting our discussion to the Republican Presidential race, as President Obama has minor opposition in the Democratic primary (three opponents qualified in Louisiana to oppose him).

We are now half way through in person early voting – it started this past Saturday and will continue until next Saturday. After that, mail in absentee ballots will still be accepted up until the day before Election Day. From examining early voting statistics provided to us by the Secretary of State, there are two things we noticed:

Low turnout numerically, but better than 2008

Yesterday’s cumulative turnout was 19,640, of whom 8,929 were Republicans. What does this early voting volume mean? Now that we are half way though, we expect that volume to pick up on Friday and/or Saturday, so that by Election Day, there will be about 22K early votes – the drop-off in early voting between Saturday and Monday was greater than we had forecast, which is why we adjusted our initial estimate of 25K. Still, when you compare this number against the 9,200 who early voted in the 2008 Republican Presidential primary, it appears that  voter turnout would be a little more than double what it was in 2008.

However, it is unlikely that Republican turnout will be more than double the 2008 count, because in person early voting is a relatively recent concept in Louisiana (before the law was changed, you could only vote absentee before Election Day under certain circumstances). In the 2008 primary, 6% of the Republican primary vote was cast early. Since early voting has become more popular over time (16% of those voting in the 2011 statewide elections voted early), we think at the present time that voter turnout will be between 14 and 28%, or a turnout of between 109-218K Republicans (for comparison’s sake, 161K voted for the Republican candidate in the 2008 primary)

Santorum boost?

As part of our analysis of the early vote, we looked at where (i.e., which parishes) the early votes were coming from. In 2008, Mike Huckabee narrowly defeated John McCain 43-42%. His victory was achieved by running up large margins in the more rural areas outside of the Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Lafayette media markets. In fact, the parishes he carried only represented 45% of the total vote cast and 47% of the early vote cast.  The early voting so far shows that 55% of the early vote cast came from the “Huckabee parishes.”  While this is slightly down from the 57% figure we reported after Saturday’s voting, the indications are still that the evangelical voters who supported Huckabee in 2008 are more likely to vote for Santorum than Gingrich (or even Romney) – especially since Santorum’s dual victories in Mississippi and Alabama give him credibility with Southern voters now, and the strong early vote in the “Huckabee parishes” benefits Santorum’s candidacy. Below is a graphical depiction of the 2008 vote by parish in the Republican primary. We will re analyze this data once in person early voting has concluded.

Red = Huckabee, Blue = McCain

Conclusion

Why do we make a big deal about early voting? When the Legislature essentially established “no fault” early voting several years ago, you now have a noticeable constituency of people who prefer the convenience of early voting, and this constituency has thus far ranged from 6 to 16% – a politician would be foolish to ignore this many voters, especially in a closely contested race. Also, too, early voting numbers are the first ones that are typically reported after polls have closed at 8 PM.