Race Still Matters
Bobby Jindal lost because of his race, say The New Republic’s Adam B. Kushner, The American Spectator’s John Tabin and The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes.
Excerpt from Barnes’ piece:
What occurred was the “Wilder effect,” named after the black Virginia governor elected in 1989. Wilder, a Democrat, polled well, then won narrowly. Many white voters, it turned out, said they intended to vote for a black candidate when they really didn’t. Questioned by pollsters, they were leery of being seen as racially prejudiced.Jindal’s advisers worried that he might lose the “Bubba vote,” rural whites unwilling to vote for a black candidate or even a dark-skinned Indian-American. The Jindal camp’s fears were realized. A Republican normally needs two-thirds of the white vote to win in Louisiana to compensate for losing nearly all of the black vote. But Jindal got only 60 percent of whites, according to an analysis by GCR & Associates Inc., a political consulting firm. Its findings were reported in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
…
Jindal, whose parents moved to Baton Rouge from India shortly before he was born, won 70 percent of the white vote in the New Orleans area. But outside that urban hub in the more rural and poorer parts of the state, only 48 percent of whites voted for Jindal, according to the GCR analysis.
The endorsement from the African-American Mayor of New Orleans seems to have helped Jindal considerably in the New Orleans area. It also helped with the black vote, as Tabin notes:
In some polls, he was getting as much as 15% support from blacks. According to exit poll analysis done for the New Orleans Times-Picayune by the consulting firm GCR and Associates, Jindal ultimately won 9% of the black vote statewide — 11% in New Orleans. That would have tipped the scales for most Louisiana Republicans.
Kushner notes that Jindal underperformed among white voters, even as he overperformed among blacks:
“Generally speaking,” says Ed Renwick, director of Loyola University’s Institute of Politics, “a Republican in Louisiana needs to get between 65 and 70 percent of the white vote in order to win.” In last year’s Senate race, for example, Democrat Mary Landrieu won approximately 35 percent of the white vote–considerably less than Blanco’s 40–and even that was enough to put her over the top.
Some conclusions from these numbers:
- Racism still exists in Louisiana.
- Jindal lost only about 5 percent of the white vote due to racism. That means the overwhelming majority of voters are voting on the issues, not on the candidate’s race.
- Jindal’s defeat has the positive effect of keeping Republicans from triumphalist complacency going into 2004.
- The fact that Blanco won may make Senator John Breaux (D-LA) more likely to retire in 2004, rather than run for re-election. Now that Senator Mary Landrieu and Governor-elect Kathleen Blanco have won two close statewide races within a year, Breaux may feel that a “moderate” Democrat will have a good chance of holding on to his seat.
- If Breaux retires, the race to replace him will likely be between Republican Congressman David Vitter and “moderate” Democrat Congressman Chris John. Race will not be a distinguishing factor in that campaign because both are white men. The candidates will have to campaign on the issues in a presidential election year, which should give Vitter a slight edge.
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