Low Black turnout causes run-off in the governor’s race and doomed election of Temple and Young

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

An anemic African-American vote marked the main reason that John Bell Edwards failed to earn a 50 percent victory in the primary. Moreover, compelling evidence exists that low Black turnout – merged with an unwillingness for African Americans to cast a ballot in an all-GOP race – doomed the candidacies of the fusion contenders such as Tim Temple running for insurance commissioner and John Young running for Jefferson Parish president. These Republicans enjoyed heavy Democratic support as well as nearly ubiquitous backing from the African-American leadership, yet they went down to defeat.

Of course, disguising this trend, turnout on October 12, did increase to 45 percent, or 1.34 million voters, compared to 2015 primary for Governor where 1.14 million, or 39 percent, went to the polls. However, that mostly constituted a Caucasian conservative landslide, with rural whites flipping their previous support for Edwards and their historic Democratic allegiances to back the GOP – perhaps in part due to President Trump’s pre-election rally and constant tweets.

Locally in Orleans Parish, Edwards did earn 87 percent of the vote, roughly equivalent to what he earned against David Vitter in the 2015 runoff. Nevertheless, voter turnout in New Orleans constituted a meager 38.5 percent. JMC Analytics Pollster and “self-described political nerd” John Couvillon noted to The Louisiana Weekly, that while 25 percent of the early vote was Black, he estimated that due to 35 percent Election Day turnout in Caucasian precincts and 28 percent Election Day turnout in the Black precincts, 27 percent of October 12’s electorate was African American. Put another way, an estimated total electorate that was 26.5 percent Black, far below the numbers making it to the polls in the last few election cycles.

African-American voter turnout statewide came to just 38 percent versus Caucasian turnout of 49.8 percent. While Black turnout does often lag white turnout, it rarely reaches a twelve point differential. As WWL election expert Clancy Dubos noted, African Americans make up 31.4 percent of the Louisiana electorate, yet in the primary they cast only 26.4 percent of the total votes. Whites comprise 63.4 percent of the electorate, yet they cast 70.7 percent of the primary ballots. Republicans got out their vote. Democrats did not.

The state GOP convinced more than 163,000 chronic Caucasian voters who sat out the November 2015 runoff between Edwards and David Vitter to vote in this year’s primary, causing Edwards to earn 21,000 fewer votes on Oct. 12 than he got in the 2015 runoff. Edwards could not carry rural parishes where this pro-life, pro-gun Democrat had triumphed four years before. The collective GOP vote even bested him in his home parish of Tangipahoa, where his brother is the current sheriff, and he hails from a law enforcement dynasty.

A twenty-one thousand voter deficit over 2015 also explains a large portion of Tim Temple’s 82,596 margin of defeat to incumbent GOP Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon. Temple had heavily courted both the Black vote and had almost universal Democratic support, running an almost flawless race, yet he lost 47–53 percent. But there is an important distinction. Forty-seven percent is also what John Bel Edwards earned; however, the Governor received 625,970 votes to Temple’s 549,132.

The overall total statewide vote in the Insurance Commissioner’s race at 1,180,860 was far below 1,343,481 who cast a ballot in the Governor’s race. Some Democrats who voted for Edwards simply chose to skip the down-ballot option when there was no Democrat in the field. Since the majority of Democratic electorate in Louisiana tends to be African-American statistically, that meant quite a few Black voters could not bring themselves to vote for a Republican, even one with strong Democratic support.

Edwards did improve in the very metros which are moving away from the GOP in the age of Trump. In Jefferson Parish, Edwards got 34 percent parish-wide in the 2015 primary and 51 percent in the runoff, but this time he got 53 percent in the primary. Best of all, roughly 9,000 more Jefferson Parish voters turned out this time. So, why did this not help John Young, who shared many of the same voters with Edwards? In part, much the same reason.

For historic reasons due to her father’s reputation with the Black community, Cynthia Lee-Sheng had few prominent African-American supporters. Young earned almost all of those endorsements. Even with nearly 30 percent of Jefferson’s population being Black, though, the Councilwoman still crushed the popular former parish president 57 -36 percent. The key difference is that Edwards earned 58,916 votes to Young’s 39,041. The “no party” protest candidate Lee Bonnecarrere earned 7,464 votes, and there were 4,000 fewer voters in the parish president’s race than in the up-ballot in the gubernatorial contest.

In other words, while some Edwards voters undoubtedly opted for Lee-Sheng, the majority either hit the only non-GOP option, or opted not to vote when no Democrat was on the ballot. The fact that many of these non-participating electors were African American comes through in the competitive race for the Black-majority Council District 3 contest, where in several African-American majority precincts, the collective vote for the various African-American contenders exceeded the votes cast in the Parish Presidential contest.

This article originally published in the October 21, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.