NEW ORLEANS -- An exclusive WWL-TV poll of voters statewide shows political newcomer Carolyn Fayard behind, but within striking distance of her opponent, longtime elected official Jay Dardenne.
The Eyewitness News poll shows Dardenne, the incumbent Republican secretary of state, leading Fayard, a Democrat and New Orleans lawyer, by eight points – 47 percent to 39 percent.
“Fayard has run a remarkably good campaign,” said pollster Dr. Ron Faucheux of Clarus Research Group, which conducted the poll.
“She has gone from nowhere, to being in contention to get elected statewide to lieutenant governor in a very short time and she's now within striking distance of being able to make up the gap,” he said.
The live telephone survey of 700 likely voters across Louisiana over the weekend found 14 percent of those questioned still undecided.
“I think a lot of people in this state, even though they have now heard of Fayard and Dardenne still don't know that much about these candidates for lieutenant governor,” Faucheux said. “So a lot of people have yet to embrace either candidate with a large majority of support one way or another, which means that the race is still fluid.”
Dardenne leads among men and white voters (54 percent to 34 percent for Fayard), while Fayard leads among women and black voters. She scores 43 percent of the female vote to Dardenne’s 41 percent. She earned 73 percent of the black vote in the poll, compared to Dardenne’s 12 percent.
Faucheux points out that women and black voters have the highest undecided numbers (17 percent undecided for women and 16 percent undecided for black voters in this survey).
“So that gives Fayard an opportunity to move up some,” Faucheux said.
On name recognition or familiarity, Dardenne is slightly ahead, with 67 percent, to 65 percent for Fayard. His favorable rating is two points higher.
But in both cases, his lead falls within poll's margin of error of error of +/- 3.7 percent, meaning they are statistically tied on those questions.
In view of those similarities, Faucheux said it appears party affiliation could be giving Dardenne an edge because he's a Republican and Fayard is a Democrat.
“It would tend to work for Jay Dardenne at this point because we have seen there are some anti-Democratic feelings in the state right now, as there across the country, that have to do with democratic control of Congress, President Obama's policies which aren't extremely popular in this state,” Faucheux said.
In fact, voters in the poll give Obama a disapproval rating of 58 percent. Yet, in some ways, Faucheux said Dardenne may not be doing as well as expected.
In the primary, Faucheux said, Republican candidates for lieutenant governor earned 64 percent of the vote and Democrats got 36 percent of the primary vote.
“So when you look at it, Dardenne is underperforming in terms of where Republicans performed in the primary. But the runoff will be an electorate more favorable to Democrats because you'll have a higher turnout,” Faucheux said.
Faucheux said the final days of the race could be crucial for both Dardenne and Fayard.
“Both candidates have yet have give the voters of the state a strong reason to vote against the other candidate,” Faucheux said. “And so we'll see what happens in the last week, whether they effectively do that or not.”
Whichever candidate is elected on Nov. 2 will take over a job that puts them a heartbeat away from the governor’s office. The person currently holding that job, Gov. Bobby Jindal, is the most popular elected official that voters were asked about in the WWL-TV poll, with an approval rating of 63 percent. But so far Jindal has not used that popularity to help Dardenne -- his fellow Republican -- by endorsing him.
