Bobby's on a roll! The "Mars/Venus" gap really gets big in these State races.
"It's natural whenever there is a Republican vs. a Democrat. Democrats have done more to attract women, and Republicans appeal more to men,"
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Republican Bobby Jindal nears 50 percent
Race far from over, but Jindal has five-point lead over Democrat Blanco
John Hill
Posted on November 8, 2003
(c) 2003 The Town Talk
BATON ROUGE - Republican Bobby Jindal, leading Democrat Kathleen Blanco by 5 points, was nearing the 50 percent majority with likely voters, according to The Town Talk/Louisiana Gannett poll.
Forty-eight percent favored Jindal and 43 percent Blanco. The rest were undecided. The poll of 625 self-identified likely voters statewide was taken Tuesday through Thursday night.
"It looks like it is his race to lose, but that doesn't mean he has it nailed down," said pollster Brad Coker. "From the time the poll was finished, there were nine days left, a long time in a hotly contested race."
Louisiana's Gannett newspapers -- the Alexandria Town Talk, the Lafayette Daily Advertiser, The News-Star of Monroe, the Opelousas Daily World and The Times of Shreveport -- paid for the poll, which has a margin of error of 4 points.
Both Jindal and Blanco are household names: 98 percent of those polled recognized their names, and only one out of four had neutral opinions about them. Jindal had an edge in favorable/unfavorable ratios.
Favorable opinions
Fifty-three percent had a favorable opinion of Jindal, compared to 21 percent with an unfavorable opinion; 47 percent had a favorable opinion of Kathleen Blanco, while 25 percent had an unfavorable opinion of her.
Jindal's largest lead was in northern and central Louisiana, 51 percent to 37 percent for Blanco. He had an 11-point lead, 52 to 41, in his home base of Baton Rouge and the so-called Florida parishes.
The gap was narrower in the New Orleans metro area, where the point spread was 48 for Jindal to Blanco's 42. Blanco held a 13-point lead in her Acadiana home base, favored by 53 percent compared to Jindal's 40 percent.
Traditional gaps
There were the traditional racial and gender gaps. Whites favored Jindal by a two-to-one margin of 61 percent to 29 percent for Blanco; blacks favored Blanco by a more than eight-to-one advantage of 83 percent to 11 percent for Jindal. Among all men, Jindal held a 53-39 advantage.
Jindal held a 40-point advantage among white men, 66 to 26, but only a 24-point advantage, 56 to 32, among white women. Among black males, Blanco had a 65-point advantage, 79 to 14 for Jindal, but among black females, Blanco's advantage was 78 points or 86 percent to 8 percent for Jindal.
The turnout level among black voters is still very important to the outcome of the race, Coker said. The gender gap has been around for 20 years in national politics, said Coker, whose firm, Mason-Dixon Polling and Research of Washington, D.C., has polled in all 50 states.
"It's natural whenever there is a Republican vs. a Democrat. Democrats have done more to attract women, and Republicans appeal more to men," he said.
U.S. Sen. John Breaux's endorsement might be worth more to Blanco than Gov. Mike Foster's endorsement of Jindal "because Breaux is so much more popular than Foster. Breaux is given a positive rating by 71 percent and a negative rating by only 26 percent of those holding an opinion, while Foster is rated negatively by 49 percent and positively by 48 percent.
While more than half the undecided voters in the governor's race said an endorsement made no difference to them, 23 percent said Breaux's endorsement would be more influential, compared to 9 percent who said Foster's support might make a difference.
No one is neutral on President George W. Bush, who has not campaigned in Louisiana, as he did to help successful Republican candidates in Mississippi and Kentucky.
Sixty percent rated Bush positively, but 40 percent rated the president negatively.
"If Breaux campaigns hard for Blanco, he might be able to attract more of the undecided vote," Coker said. "Ultimately, Blanco has to campaign for herself, but Breaux is the best card the Democrats have in their deck."
University of Louisiana at Monroe political scientist Pearson Cross said Blanco needs a greater percentage of white votes.
"Right now, Kathleen Blanco is not at the magic number that will get a Democrat elected," Cross said. "She is at 29 percent, but needs to be at 32 to 34 of the white vote, and a very strong black turnout that votes for her."
"Louisiana is getting more and more like the rest of the country," Cross said. "I cannot detect in these poll numbers any effect of Jindal's ethnicity, but you can see there may be some anti-woman backlash among black males. Black males are significantly stronger in their support for Jindal than black females."
"Black males are starting to vote like white males," he said.
How the poll was taken
Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. of Washington, D.C conducted The News-Star/Louisiana Gannett newspaper poll.
The firm interviewed a total of 625 registered voters by telephone Tuesday through Thursday nights. All stated they were likely to vote in the Nov. 15 runoff election.
Those interviewed were selected by the random variation of the last four digits of telephone numbers. A cross-section of exchanges was utilized and quotas were assigned to reflect voter turnout by parish.
The margin for error, according to standards customarily used by statisticians, is no more than plus or minus 4 percentage points. This means that there is a 95 percent probability that the "true" figure would fall with 4 points of those polled if all voters were surveyed.
The margin for error is higher for any subgroup, such as a regional or party grouping.
The polling sample included 300 men (48 percent) and 325 women (52 percent); 462 whites, 74 percent, 157 blacks (25 percent), and 6 of other races (1 percent); 383 Democrats (61 percent), 166 Republicans (27 percent) and 76 independents 12 percent).
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