NPR: Louisiana is going Republican
Source: National Public Radio
Now this is really interesting:
Gov. Bobby Jindal, 37, has been mentioned as a vice presidential prospect after just seven months in office. He's riding high in local polls now.
But what's more striking is President Bush's approval rating in Louisiana. It's still up around 50 percent in the state, roughly 20 points higher than the national average.
Villere says it's because most people don't hold Bush responsible for the post-Katrina disaster.
"You have to remember George Bush is president of the U.S.," Villere says. "He wasn't mayor of New Orleans or governor of Louisiana. … Those were all Democrats, they weren't Republicans."
The Democrats' View
Louisiana Democrats see it a little differently.
Their party chairman, Baton Rouge attorney Chris Whittington, says George Bush and his party still bear the burden of responsibility for the post-Katrina fiasco.
"He turned his back on us," Whittington says. "I mean, lighting up the French Quarter for 20 minutes so he can give a speech and then turning off the electricity? While people sit in their houses sweltering for a month? Yeah, people remember that. They remember it very well."
Katrina may still fire up the Democrats, but the damage it inflicted on New Orleans also dealt the party a potentially crippling blow. Whole neighborhoods that had been strongly Democratic were washed away.
Silas Lee, a pollster who teaches sociology at Xavier University of Louisiana, notes that New Orleans had been losing people for decades before 2005. And then Katrina came.
"We lost half the population, which has rebounded now to 300,000 plus," Lee says. "And in terms of voting population, we fell from 200 to 100 plus post-Katrina. That contributes to a significant loss in terms of registered voters."
You wouldn't expect to find people in Louisiana who don't blame Bush for the post-Katrina mess, but I guess there are targets closer to home (all of whom screwed up as well, I think). It will be interesting to see if Landrieu can hold it together for the election though. She didn't exactly impress a lot of people (me among them) with her slow response time either.
