A study of the gubernatorial primary results shows President Trump’s October rally in Lake Charles may have only had a slight boost at the ballot box. LSU political researcher Dr. Michael Henderson says Trump may have only moved the needle in the Lake Charles region by about 2%, which resulted in an additional 2,000 GOP votes.
“It is not a tremendous impact and certainly not the number of votes that would constitute the gap between what the Democratic incumbent Edwards got versus the majority he would have needed for a runoff,” said Henderson.
Henderson says there is no evidence in polling that the impeachment inquiry galvanized Republicans to oppose the Democrat Governor.
“So if you look before the impeachment inquiry and the Ukraine story broke and then look after when it was starting and they were having the closed-door testimony in Congress, there’s really no shift in any of that. His polling remained pretty steady,” said Henderson.
Henderson says the question remains as to whether the continued tethering of Trump’s and Rispone’s parallels will result in Republican voters viewing the race through a partisan lens.
“John Bel Edwards is still strongly outperforming the typical Democrat in a statewide contest in Louisiana, so it’s still not all about partisanship,” said Henderson.
Trump continues to focus on the Governor’s race with an appearance in Monroe tonight and he’ll be in Bossier City on November 14th.
