I feel like we have a better shot in Arkansas than Louisiana at this point. At least Pryor doesn't have to worry about the drop off in turn out during the run off.
There was no drop off in 2002.
Even without drop-off, Landrieu trails Cassidy+Maness by 11. The whole is always less than the sum of its parts in politics, but I don't think that's an advantage that can be overcome by anything less than conservative drop-off being significantly greater than liberal drop-off, which seems profoundly unlikely. Landrieu is gone, though it'll take a month longer than in Arkansas for this to be ratified.
Louisiana voters are used to having runoffs, as its part of the electoral culture. You're overlooking that if you're counting on signficant dropoff between the primary and runoff.I'm not; in fact, I'm commenting on the likelihood that there
won't be a large drop-off of one group disproportionately to another group.
My sense from talking to Maness supporters is that they'd almost rather sit out the runoff as opposed to voting for Cassidy. I forget which poll it was, I think it was CNN or Fox, but less than 80% of Maness supporters said they're likely to vote in the runoff he doesn't get a spot.
I haven't talked with any Maness supporters, but that seems to be contradicted by polling that has pretty consistently shown Landrieu narrowly leading Cassidy in the jungle primary but losing by high single digits in the runoff. Where else is Cassidy getting those voters if they're not second-preference? And in my experience in most other races when TP candidates lose primaries their voters may complain and dither but they always end up voting for the Republican.
From my talks with operatives in the LA DP, they're pretty confident about ground game; as of yesterday, early voting totals were already double what they were in 2010. I'm pretty confident they'd be able to replicate that in December.
Now, if you have any such local insights, please do share!
I don't, and I understand that being in Louisiana you can see the race in much greater color than I can. But even outside of the state we can interpret polls
