| Hat Tip to arubyan.
The title of the article in Roll Call, (subscription required) is New Louisiana Poll Worries Republicans. As arubyan noted, the poll shows Woody Jenkins losing by three points to Don Cazayoux, which Roll Call notes:
[Is] not great math to begin with in a district that gave President Bush a 19-point margin of victory in the 2004 presidential campaign and repeatedly sent former Rep. Richard Baker (R) to Congress by large margins.
It gets better for Don when you get into the cross-tabs, but I'd love to know what the margin of error is, so take this with a grain of salt:
Men 55 and older preferred Cazayoux 51 percent to 38 percent, voters who turned out in the special March primary would vote for Cazayoux 53 percent to 39 percent and those voters who said they are definitely going to vote in the special preferred Cazayoux by nine points.
Now, polls are obviously a snapshot in time, and anything can happen between now and the general election, which is being held on May 3rd, so this thing is still fluid. You might see the country club Republicans say, well, we gave it a shot, now we have to make sure we send a GOPer to Congress, so we'll hold our noses and put Woody in there. And the African-American vote may not come out for Don if he wins the runoff. That reminds me, Don still has to win the run-off against his friend Michael Jackson on Saturday.
I expect to see a repeat of what happened in the primary in terms of where the candidates got their votes:
- Cazayoux will likely run up the score in the outlying parishes and try to keep it close enough in Baton Rouge that he wins.
- Jackson, obviously, will be attempting to run up the score here in Baton Rouge, while garnering enough votes in the outlying parishes to put him over the top.
The runoff is anyone's game ... with the GOTV operation of the campaigns holding the chances of victory for both candidates. I know that both campaigns are busy calling voters, as this GOTV (Get Out The Vote) time, with the voting starting in less than 48 hours. |
