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LA Gov 03: The Vote that Dare Not Speak Its Name
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| Parent(s) |
Race
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| Contributor | User 490 |
| Last Edited | User 490 Apr 21, 2004 01:48pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - Weekly Standard, The |
| News Date | Wednesday, April 21, 2004 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | BOBBY JINDAL led polls in the Louisiana governor's race last fall right up to Election Day. And for good reason: He was one of the most impressive candidates either party had fielded in any election in any state in recent years. Then he lost. A 32-year-old Republican from Baton Rouge, Jindal is the son of emigrants from India. Because he is dark-skinned, there was a worry he would lose the so-called Bubba vote--code for the racist vote. Now it's clear that that's exactly what cost him the governorship.
Two political scientists from Hamilton College in New York compared the areas where David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klansman, ran well in 1991 with the vote for Jindal's Democratic opponent, Kathleen Blanco, in 2003. There was a remarkable correlation. Where Duke did well, Blanco did well.
Blanco, who'd served as lieutenant governor before being elected governor, did not make any racial appeals in the campaign. Yet she benefited enormously from race-influenced voting. "Our results indicate that a significant number of those who voted for David Duke, the most racist statewide candidate of the post-civil rights era, contrary to previous elections and even after controlling for other factors, swung their support from the non-white Republican to the white Democrat," Richard Skinner and Philip A. Klinkner concluded in their study.
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