New poll looks at hypothetical runoff pairings in La. governor’s race

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - A recent Gray TV poll on Louisiana’s governor’s race looked at hypothetical runoff matchups for Louisiana’s governor’s race between frontrunner Jeff Landry and four other candidates.

The question posed to 625 registered voters was: If no candidate gets over 50% of the vote in the primary, there will be a run-off election between the top two vote-getters in mid-November. If a run-off election for governor were held today for whom would you vote if the candidates were:

If there were a runoff between Landry and Wilson, the poll found that 52% of voters statewide would vote for Landry and 39% for Democrat Shawn Wilson.

And a Landry-Wilson runoff broken down by race shows Landry would get 70% of the white vote and 11 of the black vote. By comparison, Wilson would get 24% of the white vote and 74% of the black vote.

Political pundits like Dillard University political analyst Robert Collins, Ph.D., expect Wilson to land in a runoff with Landry.

“Those numbers are expected. I mean Sean Wilson is doing well with the Democratic base even though there’s still about 9% of the vote out there undecided, so there’s certainly room for Wilson to grow now of course for him to overtake Landry in a runoff he would need to break off some of the independents or some of the more conservative Democrats,” said Collins.

According to the poll, if Landry faces Waguespack in a runoff, Landry would receive 52% of the vote compared to Waguespack who would get 27%.

And when the responses were broken down by race, Landry gets 56% of the white vote and 42% of the black vote. Waguespack, according to the poll results, would get 23% of the white vote and 36% of the black vote in a head-to-head contest with Landry.

If Landry landed in a runoff with Lundy, the poll shows he would get 56% of the vote statewide and Lundy 30%. By race, Landry would receive 67% of the white vote and 31% of the black vote. And Lundy would receive 24% of the white vote and 44% of the black vote.

In a Landry-Schroder matchup, the poll says Landry gets 51% of the vote statewide compared to Schroder who would receive 23%. And by racial breakdown, Landry gets 56% of the white vote and 39% of the black vote. Schroder, by comparison, would get 21% of the white vote and 27% of the black vote.

And if Hewitt ends up in the runoff with Landry, the poll found that statewide Landry would get 53% of the vote and Hewitt 23%. By race, Landry snares 61% of the white vote in such a matchup and 34% of the black vote. And Hewitt gets 18% of the white vote and 35% of the black vote.

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Collins said the poll suggests Landry would be the top vote-getter regardless of who he faces in a runoff.

“So, Landry has shown that he is currently pulling a majority of the vote in every hypothetical runoff with every candidate that is currently considered a major candidate in the race, so he’s doing well right now,” said Landry.

And Collins said Wilson remains the favorite to be in a runoff with Landry.

“What I find interesting about this poll is that some of the Republican candidates have said, ‘don’t put Shawn Wilson in the runoff because he has no possibility of winning in a runoff with Jeff Landry, so vote for me. Your vote for Shawn Wilson is basically a wasted vote,’” said Collins. “The problem with that is if you look at the hypothetical runoff, Shawn Wilson is actually currently running better in the numbers than any one of those Republican candidates.”

The poll has a margin of error of no more than plus or minus 4%.

The primary election is October 14 but early voting begins on September 30.

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