Sen. Mary Landrieu has a numbers problem — and not just with the 60 votes she couldn’t pick up for the Senate to approve the Keystone XL pipeline Tuesday night.
Landrieu faces a daunting re-election in Louisiana, where she is immersed in a run-off with Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy.
A poll released recently by Cassidy’s campaign showed him leading Landrieu by roughly 16 points, and Republicans and Cassidy so far have obliterated Landrieu and Democrats on the airwaves with television advertisements.
“The race is not over in Louisiana,” soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday. “[Landrieu] has not given up, and we have not given up on her behalf.”
But the numbers aren’t adding up.
In 2002, Landrieu held on in a competitive run-off partly because voter turnout among African Americans ticked up slightly from the general election.
In that election, African-American voters comprised 27 percent of the electorate. The highest that share has ever reached in Louisiana was about 30 percent, in 2008 and 2012 with President Obama on the ballot.
But this time, Landrieu is struggling more among white voters and might need an even higher turnout by African-American voters to compensate.
Cassidy’s internal poll showed just 20 percent of white voters supporting Landrieu. If that were to hold, Landrieu would need African-American voters to comprise around 40 percent of the electorate, according to an analysis by John Diez, a Louisiana-based Republican strategist. A more realistic goal for Landrieu might be expanding her support among white voters to 30 percent and turning out an electorate with 30 percent African American voters — a heady proposition by any measure.
“The political calculus is almost impossible,” Diez said. “Her best-case scenario requires African-American turnout to be at a historic, all-time high and for her to grow 10 points among white voters in 19 days with little money.”
Landrieu’s push in the Senate to pass the Keystone XL pipeline might have been engineered to target some of those white voters in regions of the state anchored in the oil and gas industries.
“Historically, Democrats always performed highest among whites in south Louisiana,” Diez said. “If Landrieu is going to grow among white voters, typically this would be the region where she would see the most growth and a region where you would think the Keystone pipeline would help.”
But Republicans, at least, expected that the vote on the Keystone pipeline wouldn’t be much of a net positive for Landrieu, if at all.
“If she gets it out of the Senate, then she’s finally done her job, but most people see it as a last act of desperation,” Scott Hobbs, a Louisiana-based Republican strategist, said before the vote. “If she fails, it will be like Charlie Brown whiffing the football.”
There has been little polling on the race since the general election, and it is difficult to tell exactly how large of a hole Landrieu is in. Prior to the election, public polling showed Cassidy leading Landrieu by 5 points on average in a head-to-head match-up.
Now, Landrieu’s toughest calculation will be finding the votes at home to win re-election.
This article has been updated.
