489,649 Louisianans early voted for the run-off, a record-shattering number of early voters for a non-Presidential election.

Unlike in the primary, the early voting electorate looks a lot friendlier to Governor Edwards. 31 percent of all early voters were African American, and JMC Analytics pollster John Couvillon says the number was even more impressive on Saturday.

“On the last day of early voting you had a 40% black electorate, and I could only think of four other times in history that has happened, and three of those four were when Barack Obama was on the ballot in 2008,” says Couvillon. “In other words, everything clicked for Democrats on the last day of early voting.”

That’s JMC Analytics pollster John Couvillon who says three of those times were during 2008 when Barack Obama was first elected President.

Couvillon says to put the 31 percent overall black turnout and the 40 percent last day of early voting black turnout in perspective, “If it’s in the 27-30% range, that’s average, above 30% is good, above 35% is great, and above 40% is attention-getting,”

Couvillon expects total early voting to hit 500,000 when absentee ballots are counted, and you should see about one to 1.1 million votes when you extrapolate that out to total run-off participation.

“What that means in practical terms is this, number one I think early voting will be over 30 percent of the total vote, and number two I think total turnout will be in the 52-55% range,” says Couvillon.

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