LA EARLY VOTERS – Early voting for the Louisiana Gubernatorial runoff began last Saturday and according to the Secretary of State’s Office… it appears that November 2nd voters broke the state record as the highest first day of early voting turnout ever. Louisiana voters went to the polls Saturday in huge numbers –some 89,623 early votes were counted…that’s about 2500 more votes than the benchmark 2016 presidential election AND about 12,000 more votes than were cast in the recent primary.
John Couvillon of JMC Analytics and Polling took a look at the demographic breakdown of early voters in both the primary and current runoff. He shared his thoughts with Public Radio WRKF in Baton Rouge.
COUVILLION: "One of the things that we had noted in the beginning was that you had external events, more specifically the impeachment inquiry, which drove Republican turnout pretty high and stayed throughout out early voting. Now that governor Edwards is in a runoff, I think there's much more of a motivation to get Democrats to go early vote. They succeeded. You had a much stronger democratic turnout this time around than in the primary. Republican numbers stayed relatively strong as well. Both contributed to two nights of record turnout."
Couvillion says he thinks high early voting turnout will continue to grow for future elections.
COUVILLION: "You have a generation of people, as they're entering the voting bloodstream, so to speak. They appreciate the convenience of early voting, and so early voting has steadily gained popularity. In the primary, a record 28% of the total was cast early. This time, I would not be surprised to see the total get into the 30-33% range."
EARLY VOTING INFORMATION: WHERE TO VOTE (ALL PARISHES Early & Election Day)
