Decision 2014: Shrinking the (East Baton Rouge Parish School) Board Last night, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board voted 6-5 to reduce its membership from 11 to 9 members.
Archive | Analysis
RSS feed for this sectionDecision 2014: Forecasting the November 2014 midterm election results
Will the 2014 midterm elections be a Republican blowout year, a mildly Republican year, or a year where Democrats “break even”? That is the central question of this election cycle, and you will get substantially different answers, depending on which political observers you talk to.
Decision 2014: Mississippi US Senate GOP runoff postmortem
Background (UPDATED 6/25 AM) With all but two precincts in Hinds County reporting, Senator Thad Cochran has improbably come back from what was to be a near certain defeat. How did he do so? Quite simply, Senator Cochran expanded the primary electorate by getting Democrats to vote in the Republican runoff – runoff turnout was 18% […]
Decision 2014: Mississippi US Senate GOP Runoff (JMCEL’s election night guide)
Background For the past three election cycles (2010, 2012, and 2014), Republican primaries/runoffs have an element of drama to them, as an ongoing tug of war has developed between those allied with “the Establishment” and those who are more sympathetic to party activists and are more TEA Party friendly.
Demographic changes in East Baton Rouge Parish – A quarter century “look back”
The Baton Rouge area is one part of Louisiana that does not have a well-defined image: John Maginnis once noted that “it was formed and is still largely controlled by outside forces.” Even today, it is inhabited by a “gumbo” of different groups: a large black minority of all economic strata, a significant professional population, […]
Louisiana Census Data as of July 1, 2013
In our last posting, we discussed population changes from the perspective of changes in voter registration counts for all 144 legislative districts. In this article, we would like to examine population changes from Census data. This past week, the US Census released interim population estimates showing population changes for all 50 states between April 2, 2010 […]
Demographic changes to Louisiana legislative districts, 2010-2014
Background The Louisiana Legislature consists of 105 representatives and 39 senators, all of whom are elected for four year terms. On average, each representative represents 43,000 people, while a senator (on average) represents 116,000 people.
Decision 2014: Louisiana Senate Poll/”Polling 101″
Earlier today, Public Policy Polling (also known as PPP) released a poll in the Louisiana Senate race that showed three term incumbent Mary Landrieu clinging to a one point lead over Representative Bill Cassidy (R-Baton Rouge). In its write up, PPP noted that this one point lead was a significant tightening of the race since […]
Decision 2014: a “New” New Orleans ?
Introduction For about 30 years, citywide elections in New Orleans had an air of predictability to them after its last white mayor, “Moon” Landrieu, left the office in 1977: the city’s (then) growing black population and voting majority split along racial lines, and the support of black voter groups (known as the “alphabet soup” organizations) […]
Fantasy redistricting – Part V (Louisiana Senate)
Background In the last installment of this series, we discussed how a legislative (specifically, the state House) redistricting plan might look if a partisan Democratic (and a Republican) redistricter were to draw the lines, given recent population estimates. In this final installment, we will redraw the state’s Senate districts. Given the change in voter registration […]