10:23 CST [Nate]: Unlike in Georgia, I don’t see any reason for Democrats to fret here. LA-4 is pretty red, and the only poll of that race not released by a campaign had Fleming winning by 2. A big, blowout win might have meant something, but Fleming winning in a squeaker is pretty much par for the course. And as for William Jefferson … I can’t imagine that a lot of Democrats are going to miss him. Cao should be a fun guy to watch.
10:16 CST [Sean]: The AP hasn’t called the 4th district, but congratulations to Anh “Joseph” Cao, who replaces William Jefferson with an upset win in a Democratic +28 PVI district, Louisiana’s 2d. This gives Democrats an opportunity to re-take this overwhelmingly blue district in two years, and gets rid of a giant embarrassment.
10:13 CST [Nate]: I say “apparent” victory because provisional ballots are still outstanding, and because as we’ve seen in Minnesota, sometimes funny things happen once the precincts double-check and finalize their counts. Also, it’s probably close enough to warrant a recount, although 356 votes out of ~90,000 cast is generally too many votes to hope to make up in a recount. But our tentative congratulations to John Fleming, who most likely will keep the district red.
10:04 CST [Nate]: And just like that, Bossier comes in and gives Fleming a 356-lead and apparent victory, as all precincts have reported.
10:02 CST [Nate]: Carmouche is not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination, as the entirety of the remaining vote is in Bossier County, which leans red. I’m now showing Carmouche winning by only 109 votes.
9:42 CST [Nate]: Cao would be the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress.
9:39 CST [Sean]: Carmouche looking solid: 1,853 votes with 90% in. With 54% in in the 2d district, Cao still looking strong to unseat the indicted Democrat. He leads by 3,453 votes.
9:31 CST [Nate]: OK, Carmouche held his own in last batch of ballots that came in from Bossier. Now projecting a win for him by around 1,400 votes.
9:28 CST [Sean]: With 29% in, Cao up 3,894 votes and 19%.
9:27 CST [Nate]: A bunch more vote in from Caddo, and Carmocuhe is now “only” winning there by 20 points. Good, but maybe not good enough. There are still quite a few more precincts to count in Caddo; the problem for Carmouche is that there are more precincts to count in neighboring Bossier county, which has gone heavily for Fleming thus far.
9:25 CST [Sean]: I haven’t spent enough time in the car, let’s have a Bayou recount. With 84% in, Carmouche leads by 2,295 votes.
9:21 CST [Nate]: Back to LA-4 for a moment: another way to look at this is simply to extrapolate out the results based on the percentage of precincts reporting so far in each parish. By that metric, I’m showing a Fleming (R) win by 659 ballots. Recount?!?
9:18 CST [Sean]: The Carmouche-Fleming results have stalled for a moment, but with 21% in, the Republican Cao still leads Freezer Cash Guy by over 1,100 votes and 10%, 53-43. If that holds it would be an upset, and one I suspect welcomed by Republicans and Democrats alike.
9:14 PM [Nate]: As of 9:05 PM, Democrat Paul Carmouche leads Republican John Fleming by 3.1 points in Louisiana’s 4th Congressional District.
In order to get a rough sense for the nature of the parishes that have reported so far, I’ve been keeping track of Mary Landireu’s performance performance in the senatorial election on November 4th.
Overall, I estimate that Landrieu won LA-4 by 2.9 points.
However, if we weight Landrieu’s results on a parish-by-parish basis based on the number of ballots counted in the Carmouche-Fleming race so far, she won by 4.4 points. In other words, the parishes counted so far appear to be slightly bluer than the district as a whole.
An ominous sign for Carmouche: three parishes (Bienvile, Red River, Sabine) have counted all of their ballots so far; Carmouche has underperformed Landireu by about 10 points in each of those precincts.
On the other hand, Carmouche is from Shereveport in Caddo Parish, by far the largest Parish in the district. So far, Carmouche is crushing Fleming by 30 points in Caddo Parish, and has overperformed Landreiu, who won Caddo by 19 points. The key for Carmouche, then, is that he needs to continue to overperform Landrieu in Caddo, as it appears he will underfperform her on some other parts of the district.
9:10 CST [Sean]: Nate will explain in a moment, but some of Carmouche’s better parishes are in, and while Carmouche has the lead now (by 1,747 votes with 62% in), it’s far from clear he’ll win.
9:06 CST [Sean]: With 57% in, Carmouche pushes the lead back over 2,000 votes and 3%. No change in the 2d district race.
9:00 CST [Sean]: When the very first precinct reported and 1% was in, it looked like a strong start for John Fleming, the Republican, in Louisiana’s 4th district. But since those early moments when the polls closed an hour ago, the race has been neck and neck, with Democratic Party candidate Paul Carmouche edging into the lead. With 45% reporting, Carmouche’s lead was just 318 votes. This is going to be an exciting finish.
In the first results in New Orleans’s 2d district, Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao, bidding to be the first Vietnamese-American House member, held an edge in very early returns over the indicted Democrat, Cash Bricks Jefferson, a 450-vote lead with 4% in.