Revisiting the jungle

In Louisiana there's another statewide election scheduled. And not the one scheduled for December 6, which will decide whether incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu will keep her seat for another six years or if Rep. Bill Cassidy can take it from her. In 2002, the runoff fight for this same seat was termed "Operation Icing on the Cake" by Republican operatives; the only thing a victory in Louisiana would have done for Republicans was pad their majority from 51 seats to 52. And this year it's similar, although since Republicans are more likely than not to lose several seats in the 2016 elections--which favor Democrats for the same reasons 2014 favored Republicans--every seat they can get will be helpful. But despite the dearth of polls since Election Day, there's not much reason to suspect that Landrieu has any better chances of keeping her seat after the December runoff. Although her effort to bring the Keystone XL pipeline to a vote on the Senate floor--where Landrieu claims to have a filibuster-proof sixty-seat majority--has finally succeeded, it has really lost much of its importance election-wise since 1) it turns out a lot of voters didn't really care about her seniority when casting their votes and 2) her seniority wouldn't mean much in the 114th Congress anyway, seeing as she'd be demoted to the ranking Democratic member of the Energy Committee, from the chairmanship that she holds now. (Meanwhile, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska appears to be very pleased about her own rise to the chairmanship.) The DSCC has pulled its spending from the state and Landrieu looks to still be deep in it. LIKELY REPUBLICAN

That's all we have to say about that. The real competitive election in the Pelican State is next year, when Louisiana (as well as Kentucky and Mississippi) holds its gubernatorial election. Not even counting the fact that this election is not held in a midterm year (it's one of five states that holds its state elections in odd-numbered years), there are some key differences between 2015's gubernatorial and 2014's Senate election that make next year's more complicated to evaluate:

More on the Louisiana runoff

A couple days ago this article on the Fix at The Washington Post popped up in my Google Alerts. In it, Aaron Blake brings up something I had written about five days earlier--the very strong possibility that the Senate election in Louisiana will proceed to a runoff due to the inability of the two highest-polling candidates, incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu and U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, to break 50%. 

Blake suggests a pretty simple (and pretty good, roughly) way to interpret the polls that don't ask about the head-to-head between Sen. Landrieu and Rep. Cassidy--just stack up the votes for Republican candidates--that includes state representative Paul Hollis and retired USAF Col. Rob Maness as well as Rep. Cassidy--and those are the votes Republicans get in the runoff.

Pollsters Are Looking at the Wrong Race in Louisiana

Don't get me wrong; the Senate race is the only statewide one this year. (Louisiana holds its statewide elections every fourth year; the most recent one was in 2011.)

What I'm referring to is the Pelican State's unique (well, within the United States) system of elections, a holdover from when New Orleans was the largest city in the French North American colonies. A holdover from French civil law, Louisiana doesn't hold primaries; instead it pits every candidate that files from all parties into a great one-versus-the-world battle, known as a "jungle primary". If no majority is reached by a single candidate, the two highest-performing candidates advance to a runoff held on December 6. This allows for some great political theater, but it's hard on pollsters who have to decide which candidates to include in their polling, especially since it's possible for multiple candidates to run from each party.