Update on our Louisiana Governor Poll

As expected, incumbent John Bel Edwards (D) won reelection in a hotly contested race for governor.

Our PollSmart MR poll had Edwards up four points with four percent undecided less than a week out from election day. The final margin of victory was 2.6%.

Louisiana

We conducted the poll during the early voting period, which showed Edwards won the race by building a sizeable 16-point advantage with early voters. While Rispone held an advantage with voters who planned to vote on election day, the lead established by Edwards was just too large to overcome.

While the President held another rally in the northwestern part of Louisiana just before election day and the Republican National Committee (RNC) dumped advertising into the state to support Rispone, it simply wasn’t enough. Edwards, a pro-life conservative Democrat with support from some Louisiana Republicans, was simply too far ahead by the time additional resources arrived to support Rispone.

In 2019, we worked on refining and automating our processes to create PollSmart MR, which makes it easier for anyone to conduct accurate and affordable polling. The results in Louisiana demonstrate the improvements we’ve made in our methods.

We will be conducting additional polling for the 2020 races across the country. Follow our PollSmart MR pages for more information.