So, let's look at the Louisiana Senate exit polls, shall we?

[Recursion]

NB as pointed out downthread, these are from the Nov. 5 initial race. I don't think exit polls were done in the run-off.

http://edition.cnn.com/election/2014/results/state/LA/senate

(Click "Exit Polls" once you get there.)

Points to consider:

1. Landrieu won voters under 45, pretty handily, and they constituted 34% of the electorate

2. Landrieu won 94% of the black vote, and the black vote was 30% of the electorate, which is very close to the 32% of the population that is African American (just throwing that out before anybody says "black people stayed home&quot

3. Landrieu had higher support among Democrats (86%) than Cassidy did among Republicans (73%). Cassidy lost 20% of Republicans and Independents to Manness, the libertarian who called Cassidy a tool of the welfare state, a conservative in name only, etc.

4. Landrieu won the minority who think "government should do more" and lost the majority who think "government does too much"

5. Landrieu won 90%+ of those who approve of Obama's job as President. These people were 39% of the electorate

6. Landrieu won the 20% of voters who thought the ACA was about right and the other 20% who thought it didn't go far enough, and lost the 60% who said it went too far (you don't win this state with single payer. Seriously)

7. Landrieu won the 25% of voters who support marriage equality and lost the 75% of voters who oppose it

8. Landrieu won the 35% of voters who thought she agreed with Obama "about the right amount" and lost the 57% of voters who thought she agreed with Obama "too often"

9. Landrieu won the 22% of the voters who are not worried about a terrorist attack and lost the 78% of the voters who are

10. Landrieu won the 35% of the voters who support legalizing marijuana and lost the 65% of the voters who oppose it

11. Interestingly (especially in light of point 9), Landrieu won the voters who support US military action against ISIS, while Cassidy won the voters who oppose it

12. Landrieu got 12% of the white vote, which is the exact same percent Obama got in 2012.

[kelliekat44]

1. Nos. 6 and 7 very interesting indeed. All across the south this will likely be the case

especially in the "Bible belt."

[JI7]

2. this is from the NOvember election, right ?

if it's the same one i was looking at before there was a question about Jindal being president and like 70 percent of the state with majorities in both parties said he would not make a good president.

[Recursion]

5. It's from December 6th

And, yeah, 70% of people said Jindal would not make a good President this time.

[JI7]

6. no, the details of the exit are from November

the libertarian was not in this december election. it was only cassidy and landrieu .

it's confusing because they add in note about winner and date in yesterday's election to the page they already had for the november election .

but they need a different page with different results.

but i'm guessing the exits are still similar to what they would have been a month ago.

[Recursion]

7. Ah, crap. Good catch. Jeers to CNN on their misleading dateline (nt)

[former9thward]

8. No, the poll is from November.

It was just Landrieu and Cassidy on the ballot in December. The Libertarian was on the November ballot. Look at your link. The dates are November.

[Recursion]

9. Thanks. (nt)

[Yupster]

3. Honestly, it looks like she was out of step

with her state and therefore lost. Seems as simple as that.

[House of Roberts]

4. And since she didn't get the Phil Robertson endorsement,

she lost by 12 points.

[BrotherIvan]

10. I can draw two conclusions from this data

1) Those that voted would have voted for any Republican over a Democrat

2) Democratic voters stayed home because they didn't care about voting for Landrieu.

Perhaps Republicans don't mind when their representatives choose the corporations who poisoned your coastline and decimated your industry, but maybe Democrats do.

As I posted in another thread, these are her major donors:

[JI7]

13. why didn't they vote for Obama in 2008 ?

[BrotherIvan]

25. She has won in the past

Ok, so according to everyone who thinks she went too far left, Louisiana and the entirety of the South is filled with racists and Tea Partiers. Got it. Let's run Republicans to try to get Republicans to vote for us. Fuck you Democrats, you don't count. You just have to vote for us no matter what. Because if you don't, they'll roll back reproductive rights...oh wait. If you don't you won't have a jobs program...oh wait. If you don't Republicans will win! Oh wait...

What changed? Gulf Oil Spill, April 2010. Perhaps it is a tinge of unrest, or a serious case of malaise & ennui. Just hoping and wishing that things would get better and they don't. Perhaps it is seeing your major industries decimated by globs of oil and your tourism tank and your leaders being slimy and deceptive about the whole thing. Remember, the Tea Party runs against Washington. They run against the system itself, so perhaps that is what people voted for.

Perhaps it is incumbency. Watching Democrats in Washington cower in the corner while the minority party of whackos beat them up. People, especially traditionalists, like fighters; they like strong leaders. But Democrats have been in charge for some time now, and perhaps you aren't happy with their overall performance. That's sort of the way it works: do a great job, get reelected. Or should work.

I don't know. Perhaps the South is gone forever. And we are beholden to them and their whacknutiness as we stand aside and let them drag this country into the shit heap. Because, obviously, clearly, undeniably there is nothing on earth Democrats can do! So let's do nothing. Or the same thing. Because that will surely work.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. So, let me guess what would happen if...

a "real Democrat" ran in LA.

[RandiFan1290]

12. So, it's Obama's fault and the ACA!

Once you purge the liberals you will have a perfect party!

[stevenleser]

14. What you can conclude from this is anyone more Liberal wouldnt have made it to the runoff.

You would have had two Republicans to choose from in the Dec 6 runoff.

[TheKentuckian]

15. George Wallace and Strom Thurmond were once Democrats surely there are modern similar folks we can

slap a circle D on.

VICTORY is within reach!

[mmonk]

16. We can but will never know.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. So in conclusion, one of the most right wing Democrats got slaughtered in LA and your

recommendation is to move further right.

[LondonReign2]

19. ^Yup

"We're not Republican enough yet!" is their rallying cry.

[Recursion]

20. In Louisiana? Yep. That or run a black candidate and bank on turnout (nt)

[Gman]

18. 12% of the white vote? Wow.

I'm sure whites made up the biggest bloc of voters.

[Recursion]

22. 60% or so

Depending on how you count hispanics.

[stevenleser]

21. It's funny how some here fight the data and facts with their theories

They absolutely insist that their version of reality is correct even though the facts completely contradict them.

[Capt. Obvious]

23. Thanks liberals

[Renaissance Man]

24. Her receiving 12% of support from white voters is the storyline, here.

Bill Cassidy's ads were Mary Landrieu = Barack Obama. Cassidy only did one debate and didn't bother working on Election Day. The virulence of white conservatives (including poor white conservatives) is on par with or even harsher than other Southern states. Living in Louisiana, trust me, these folks would vote against their interests instead of supporting sound policy any day of the week.

[Jim Lane]

26. Do you have the turnout info?

Of those who voted, Cassidy won by about 57-43.

Let's assume hypothetically that, of the adult U.S. citizens who were registered to vote or who could have registered and voted, about 30% voted in the runoff. (That's just a wild guess on my part.) That would mean that the vote was: Cassidy, 17.1%; Landrieu, 12.9%; not voting, 70%.

The "woodchuck" reaction (harking back to the thread you started a few days ago) is that we should try to win over some of the Cassidy voters. If we find a candidate who's even more conservative than Landrieu, and who can thereby swing the votes of 7% of this year's electorate who thought Landrieu was too liberal, we can win. As others have pointed out, one problem is that Landrieu was already fairly conservative by national Democratic standards. If we run a candidate who's ideologically indistinguishable from the Republican, then the only argument for the Democrat is the stuff about committee chairs and so on -- and the voters will see that, too, and the voters we're trying to sway probably prefer Inhofe to Boxer as the Environment chair.

The "penguin" reaction is to look instead at the 70%. Why didn't those people vote? What kind of candidate and campaign would persuade them to show up? It's probably not a candidate who's to the right of Landrieu.

Suppose a populist candidate, far from winning over enough of the centrists targeted by the woodchuck strategy, took no votes from Cassidy and even alienated 10% of the Landrieu voters, who switched to the Republican -- but motivated 10% of the stay-at-homes to turn out and vote Democratic. What's the result? Among the people who voted this week, Cassidy expands his lead -- but our candidate squeaks out a win anyway (Populist Dem 18.61%, Cassidy 18.39%, not voting 63%).

Obviously, each of these strategies has its problems. Furthermore, the prospects for the latter strategy depend in part on how many of those non-voters there are, which is why I'm wondering if anyone has seen data about what the turnout was. (Note that turnout as a percentage of registered voters isn't good enough, because I want to include people not registered to vote. If Louisiana has felon disqualification, that would slightly reduce the pool.)

As I mentioned in the other thread, another issue with the "penguin" strategy is that it might well take more than one cycle to work. One possible conclusion is that consistent nationwide woodchuckism offers the best prospects for the next election, but that consistent nationwide penguinism offers the best prospects for, say, 2020. (Maybe we penguins should be promoting a "2020 vision" program.)

[99Forever]

27. Let it go, your DINO LOST.

Period. End of story.