A "firefight into a footnote." Why Mary Landrieu's Racially Tinged Runoff Strategy Won't Save Her

Sen. Landrieu appears with Hillary Clinton at a recent rally in Louisiana. Photo courtesy of Gerald Herbert/A.P. The quoted portion of the title of this article is courtesy of a recent Sean Sullivan and Karen Tumulty piece for the Washington Post.

Sen. Mary Landrieu's campaign is flailing. Her ominous performance in the 2014 midterm, and her panicked (some would even call desperate) attempts at turning out black voters for the runoff this Saturday provide clear evidence of the perilous position she's in.

Just one month ago, Landrieu racked up her worst performance in her state's jungle primary since initially running for the seat in 1996. She captured just 42% of the vote, compared to her two main Republican primary opponent's combined 55%. Then, recently, came even more daunting news of her predicament - she was down in early voting in the runoff, as was African American turnout. As added insult, the DSCC has apparently chosen to stay out of the race all together.

To boot, of the five runoff surveys released since the November 4th jungle primary, Landrieu has trailed by no less than eleven points, and by as much as twenty-one points. That's near-irreversibly awful, especially for a three-term incumbent.

So it's no surprise Landrieu's latest campaign tactics have turned from merely aggressive, to potentially inciteful. Look no further than comments she made at a campaign rally just Tuesday, as reported by the Washington Post's Sean Sullivan, in which she claimed her Republican runoff opponent had been "disrespectful" to the Democratic President.

The inference she is making is clear. She was addressing a largely black audience, and was echoing comments originally directed at African-Americans in an ad by Democratic Congressman, Cedrick Richmond, who is also African-American.

When pressed further for an explanation of her comments, Landrieu explained:

"[Cassidy] refers to [Obama] by his last name. Constantly."

She added: "If you are going to refer to the president of the United States, he's at least earned the title that the people gave him when they elected him."

For what it's worth, Landrieu has had her own brushes with Presidential disrespect, according to the always objective Daily Kos.

But I digress. While Landrieu's campaign tactics as of late may seem off-putting, there's a definite purpose behind the attacks. The Democrat, if she has any chance of pulling off a miracle in Louisiana, is in dire need of historical black turnout, well beyond what was seen in the 2014 primary - or any recent statewide Louisiana race, for that matter. Why? Because in the 2014 primary, blacks comprised 65% of Sen. Landrieu's vote total, vs. just 2% of Bill Cassidy's.

In the 2014 primary, 29% of the primary electorate consisted of African American voters, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State's office. Yet Landrieu still finished well below the 50% threshold she would need to avoid the runoff. Such a feat would have required black turnout to approach the 40% level. Unfortunately for Landrieu, polls just aren't finding that - in fact, they're finding nothing near what she will need in terms of black turnout to survive.

Are Democrats On The Verge Of Vanishing In The South? A Look At How They're Performing With White Voters in 2014 Senate Contests

Come next month, the days when successful national Democrats were almost exclusively from the South may very well come to an end. Al Gore, left, and Bill Clinton, right, represent the last era of locally popular Southerners making the leap to the national stage.

The Democratic struggle to win over white voters was a well documented failure of the 2012 presidential election, in spite of their four point national popular vote win. Republican Mitt Romney carried whites by a 20-pt margin, a figure only exceeded by Ronald Reagan's landslide re-election in 1984.

But in the South, where a large number of heated 2014 Senate battles will be held in just five weeks, the white disdain for Democrats is even more pronounced.

Consider North Carolina, where Romney won nearly 70% of the white vote. Or Alabama, where he won 84%. Or Mississippi, where he carried roughly NINE in TEN whites! Even in tough years for Republicans, like 2008, they still perform stronger among white voters in the South, relative to how they do nationwide.

Given the large number of high-profile Southern senate races this Fall, I thought it might be interesting to check in on some of those GOP contenders, and compare how they're doing with white voters now to how other recent candidates performed.

Consider the Arkansas Senate race between Sen. Mark Pryor and Rep. Tom Cotton. In an average of polls taken since August (only those that provide racial demographic crosstabs), Cotton attracts 50% of white voters, while Pryor draws 36%. Though that margin surpasses Cotton's overall advantage over Pryor, it falls well short of McCain's 68% among Arkansas whites in 2008, and John Boozman's 65% in 2010. But the 2014 Pryor/Cotton race isn't comparable to those contests in the first place - it was never expected that Cotton would pull off a 20+ point victory.

New Democratic Louisiana Senate Poll Finds A Tied Race, But With Strong Likelihood of Republican Gains

A recent television ad paid for by by 'Friends of Mary Landrieu' shows citizens of a rural Louisiana town watching Landrieu TV appearances in which she takes it to the Obama Administration on a number of issues. Separating herself from an unpopular president is a must if she hopes to hang on to her seat.

Of the premier 2014 midterm contests, the Louisiana Senate race is *the* most likely to flip into Republican hands, at least according to current Huffington Post Pollster averages. That's why the  new Public Policy Polling survey allowed the Landrieu campaign to breathe at least a slight sigh of relief, especially considering the recent spate of run-off polling. An incumbent who is tied with their opponent at 47% wouldn't typically be received as welcome news for most political campaigns, unless six of the eight polls taken this year found that opponent ahead.

But as far as Democrats are concerned, the good news stops there. Because a closer inspection of the PPP memo and crosstabs suggests little room for improvement for the incumbent:

The likely Landrieu/Cassidy match up for the December runoff is tied at 47. Among those who support Maness or Hollis or are undecided for the November election, 68% move to Cassidy for December compared to only 11% who move toward Landrieu. Even though only 6% of voters are undecided in that match up, they don't set up great for Landrieu- 61% voted for Romney to 20% who voted for Obama, and she has a 14/65 approval rating.

It's July, and if you buy the PPP numbers, a mere 6% of likely voters are undecided. So no matter where they end up, the Louisiana Senate race is bound to be at least remotely close.

As Nate Silver has argued before, at least at the presidential level, there comes a point in the election cycle where job approval ratings become a leading indicator of final result. So let's divvy up that tiny 6% slice of the electorate to the Louisiana Senate candidates, with 14% going to Mary Landrieu (her approval rating among undecided voters), and 65% going to Republican Bill Cassidy (her disapproval rating among undecideds).

Suddenly, the GOP challenger jumps out to a 51-48% lead, which goes to show that despite undecided voters being few and far between, Landrieu is unpopular enough with them to make a difference. The same thing happens when you reallocate undecideds according to how they voted in the 2012 election (61% for Romney, 20% for Obama). What was a 47-47 tie again becomes a 51-48% Cassidy lead.

Despite Some Screwy Crosstabs, NYT Polling Finds Unpopular Obama Hasn't Sunk Senate Democrats Yet

Photos courtesy of Corbis Images.

A spate of brand new surveys put out by the New York Times and conducted by the Kaiser Foundation finds once incredibly vulnerable Democratic incumbent Senators hanging on, and in some cases, leading their Republican opponents in four states carried by Mitt Romney in 2012:

• Arkansas, which Obama lost in 2012 61-37%
• Kentucky, which Obama lost in 2012 61-38%
• North Carolina, which Obama lost in 2012 50-48%, and
• Louisiana, which Obama lost in 2012 58-41%.

The Democratic resilience found by the Kaiser Foundation seems all the more miraculous considering how deeply unpopular the president is in all four states. His most positive rating is 41/51%, found in North Carolina, with his most negative rating coming from Kentucky, where just 32% of registered voters approve of the job Obama is doing, and 60% disapprove. Yet still, in those states, both incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, and Democratic challenger Allison Lundergen Grimes, are exceeding expectations considering the unpopularity of their party boss. Hagan's net job approval rating is 10 points higher than the President's, and she actually leads both of her likely primary opponents by 2. Grimes, who is saddled by a President with a 60% disapproval rating, only trails McConnell 44-43%.

The same applies in Arksansas and Louisiana. In the former, Obama is stained by a 33/60% job approval rating, a full THIRTY-SIX net points LOWER than Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Pryor's 47/38% job rating. Not only that, but Pryor leads Cotton (R) 46-36%. In Louisiana, the President's net job rating is SIXTEEN points lower than Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu's.

All in all - this is some much-needed decent news for Democrats. But a word of caution regarding the results...

Buoyed By 2008-like Racial & Partisan I.D. Survey Findings, Sen. Mary Landrieu's Still Locked In A Tight Battle

Cassidy and Landrieu are locked in a tight battle, though it's Phil Robertson who appears to be the strongest candidate to take on the Democratic incumbent, at least according to PPP. His lead grows to nearly double digits if PPP had found racial and partisan identification along the same lines as 2010, and not 2008.

Three-term Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D) is no stranger to tough races. In 1995, before being elected to the Senate, she finished third in her state's jungle primary for the governorship, shutting her out of the eventual run-off election. The next year, her attempt to leap into federal office nearly failed, when she defeated former Democrat-turned-Republican Woody Jenkins for the U.S. Senate seat by an exceedingly narrow 50.2 - 49.8% margin (under controversial circumstances), making it the most competitive of thirty-three Senate races held nation-wide that day.

For reelection in 2002, she narrowly escaped defeat by a 51.7 - 48.3% margin, even as Republicans, bolstered by intense focus on foreign policy in the wake of the September 11th attacks, racked up wins across the country. Only three Senate races were more competitive that cycle.

Barack Obama's election in 2008 brought with it a Democratic wave that saw their numbers swell in the Senate by eight, and by 21 in the House. Needless to say, it was Landrieu's best performance for her seat to date. She won by a reasonably decisive, though far from overwhelming 52.1 - 45.7%, making it the sixth most competitive Senate battle of the cycle.

Unfortunately for Senator Landrieu, it doesn't appear as if this cycle will be any different from the last three. And most of the polling to date has indicated it could be her toughest yet. Furthermore, the chart below, compiled from Huffington Post Pollster and RCP, indicates things may be trending Cassidy's way:

But what's more? Three of the five pollsters to dive into the field in Louisiana have found an interesting trend. At least in terms of racial/ethnic and partisan identification, PPP, Rasmussen, and Harper are finding an electorate more akin to the 2008 presidential election, when Landrieu won by her most impressive margin to date, than in 2010, when David Vitter (R) easily dispensed of his Democratic opponent by 20 points.

Unfortunately, there were no exit polls in Louisiana in 2012. But in 2008, as the historical candidacy of Barack Obama brought out a particularly racially diverse electorate nationwide, nearly 1/3 (29%) of Louisiana's electorate identified as African American, virtually identical to recent PPP (28%), Rasmussen (29%), and Harper Polling (29%) findings. White voters made up 65% of the 2008 electorate, again, nearly the same as found by PPP (66%), Rasmussen (66%), and Harper Polling (64%).