AL-GOV: Former Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb announces candidacy

[smoltchanov]

Very good (and not too liberal) candidate in very difficult state.... But - still likely R. Roy Moore is, probably, the only one able to lose it.

[smoltchanov]

Likely R, but this could become competitive if Ivey gets primaried by some loon like Moore, or if the ghost of Bentley's corruption haunts her into the GE should she win the primary.

It's Alabama. Safe R.

MD was safe D and LA was safe R until they weren't.

My thoughts exactly. Note that both of the seats you mentioned switched hands largely thanks to terrible Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively. I wouldn't put money on Cobb winning this, but there's a non-negligible chance of a walking disaster like Moore or Dawson winning the GOP primary.

Alabama is much less inelastic than MD and LA, even on the state level. Until I see otherwise, this looks like Safe R. Still, Cobb could win in a perfect storm, but the GOP candidate would have to be pretty bad.

I.E. - Roy Moore

[smoltchanov]

AL will not vote Democratic in any statewide race. Whites have gone from 70-75% Republican to 85-90% Republican since Obama.

Louisiana is not too different from Alabama demograhpically and they voted for a Democrat for Governor while Obama was still in office. A little different circumstances, sure, but there's a non-zero chance of a Democrat winning the gubernatorial race there with all that's transpired down there. You wouldn't see so many Democrats eager to run if they didn't see polling indicating otherwise

A decent % of LA whites are Catholic, very different from the evangelical protestants of the other deep southern states. They are not as devoutly GOP.

They were substantially more liberal then "typical Deep South whites" until, approximately, 2008. But moved sharply to the right since then in most elections. Recent example - Democrats couldn't even find a candidate in special state legislative election in Acadiana, and seat (formerly - Democratic) went Republican by default. It's in this region, where Democrats will lose number of state legislative seats in 2019, when term limits will force incumbents to retire.