by Christopher Tidmore

           Voter turnout is a funny thing.  It renders the careful mathematical models of political consultants and prognosticators into useless fictions.

            In other words, the larger the size of the electorate, the less accurate polling in local elections tends to be.  

            Polly Thomas appeared after the October primary to be a proverbial shoe-in to win the runoff for the State Senate District 6 contest against businessman-challenger Conrad Appel.   She had garnered 47% of the vote to Appel 34% in the primary and missed an outright victory by roughly 370 votes.

            Thomas, a former Jefferson School Board member and current State GOP Finance Chairman, ended up losing the runoff by just under 1,789 votes to Appel, despite her own internal polling showing a comfortable 53% expected victory.  

            Likewise, former Public Service Commissioner John Schwegmann saw his nearly 42% plurality on October 4, 2008 fall to 40% by the November vote--and watched precincts he had clearly won in primary, switch to his opponent Republican Eric Skrimetta.   

            Each candidate, with near universal name recognition in their respective districts, went down to unexpectedly decisive defeats.  And, the blame cannot be put at the feet of some particularly effective attack ad that alone swung public opinion.  While both races had their share of negative charges, the swing in the electorate was more of a factor of the higher turnout of non-traditional voters due to the Presidential contest than any specific attack.

            When political consultants speak of voters, more than buzz words like chronic or superchronic voters, they resort to numbers.  

            “She’s a 1.”  

            “He’s a 4.”

            “This family is a solid 3.”

            These numerical specifications are not some anatomical rating as a college fraternity boy might make of the recent co-eds.   They rate the number of elections in which the individual has voted since the last presidential contest.  

            A five might rate as a perfect score, for example.  This person voted in each election including the low turnout tax renewal elections that seem to come in summer months and only the most hardly members of the electorate even show up to the polling places.

            Most campaigning in an election centers on those “3”’s and above, better known as likely voters.   It is a question for most campaigns of financial efficiency.  Sending direct mail to these voters usually means it is read and considered.   Knocking on their doors and updating these voters on a consistent basis is usually the path to winning an election.

            Then one spends some money on the “2”’s knowing that in a Presidential year, they might vote. 

            Polling data mathematically can extrapolate from these results pretty accurately who wins the vote.  That is, unless the “1”’s come out in force.

            That is what happened on November 4th.  

            Polly Thomas and John Schwegmann, lacking the large financial resources of their respective opponents, concentrated their campaigns on direct mail and direct appeals to the more chronic voters.   In the primary, the strategy worked.

            However, both Eric Skrimetta and Conrad Appel are successful businessmen, able to self-finance their own races to the tune of three quarters of a million dollars each.   That allowed Appel to begin running television ads in the summer, and Skrimetta after the September qualifying date.   Contrast those hundreds of spots with the four days of advertisements that Thomas ran on television and radio in the week before the primary and the week before the runoff, and the virtually non-existent position Schwegmann had on television, and their was a recipe for the newcomers’ successes.

            The “ones” are usually detached from political arguments.  They tend to ignore campaign direct mail and most political debate until close to election day.  But, they do watch television in general.   While most of the “ones” may not have voted in the primary, they had ample reason to turnout for Barack Obama or John McCain in November. 

            Knowing little about the candidates, and having never been polled or specifically targeted, these rare voters derived their primary voting information from the repetitive television ads they had seen, and neither a hundred years of the Schwegmann name thanks to their grocery store chain nor the three Senate races and two decades of public service from Polly Thomas could trump that exposure.  

            Thomas was sanguine about the principal reason for her loss.  “I am never going to try to suppress turnout,” she explained to Bayoubuzz.com.  “I am never going to be anything other than pleased that people voted.  It was just part of the results, I suppose.”

            Schwegmann was more specific in an interview with this newspaper.  “It all came down to money.  It wasn’t personal.  People saw his [Skrimetta’s] ads and they concluded he was the guy to vote for.”

            Of course, whereas unusually high turnout like the 50% of the electorate going to the polls on Nov. 4 can swing elections in unusual ways, the same is true when turnout is remarkably low.

            That’s what the GOP is counting upon in the Second Congressional District.  Republican candidate Joesph Cao premiered television advertisements this week in his quest to defeat indicted incumbent Democratic Congressman William Jefferson. 

            The strategy is simple.  With little else on the ballot, only chronic voters (the “fours” and “fives”) will likely turnout out in the black electorate.  That reduces Jefferson’s political base, while chronic whites, Democrats and Republicans, if given a viable alternative candidate will probably turnout in larger percentage numbers than African-Americans.  

            With Cao as the alternative, though, the 30,000 member Vietnamese community, will turnout en-mass for one of their own—so goes the theory, at least.  

            Therefore, if the turnout is low enough, white and Asian voters, with a minority of anti-Jefferson African-Americans could, in theory, constitute a majority of the electorate, despite the fact that normally African-American voter registration in the district is above 60%.

            The hypothesis seemed reasonable until State Senator Derrick Shepherd resigned amidst legal problems, and the State Senate President Joel Chaisson called a replacement election on the same date as the Second Congressional. 

            The presence of two well-known candidates is likely enough to draw enough African-American voters to the polls that the probability of a Republican earning election in this very Democratic district becomes minimalized. 

            However, the enthusiasm for Cao is not all for naught.   It could benefit one of those two Senate candidates.  

            Businessman Shawn Barney does have extensive support in the civil rights community thanks to his father’s memory.  He is the son of local NAACP leader Clarence Barney.  He faces another well-known political name, State Rep. JP Morrell—son of New Orleans Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge Morrell and Clerk of Court Arthur Morrell.     

            Normally, they would be very evenly matched.  However, the State Senate district in question threads itself through Gentilly into West Jefferson or the central precincts of the Second Congressional District.   That is why an election in it has such an impact on the Congressional race.  Yet the reverse is true as well.

            Both men are Democrats, but JP Morrell earned the official endorsement of the Orleans Parish Republican Party’s Political Executive Committee, becoming effectively the GOP candidate in Senate District 3.  OPEC’s efforts to encourage turnout for Joesph Cao’s will likely also indicate their party’s support for Morrell.   

Listen to Christopher Tidmore on the radio weekday mornings 7 to 9 AM on WBSL 1190 AM..  Call in your comments or questions toll free, 877-622-1190

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