Louisiana US Senate Runoff Election Day: Rep. Bill Cassidy (R) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) … Incumbent Landrieu Headed for Historic Defeat

Louisiana Senate runoff election day:

Today, December 6, 2014, is the runoff US Senate election in Louisiana between challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy and incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu. As reported at FiveThirtyEight, it appears that Sen. Landrieu is headed for an epic and historic defeat. The FiveThirtyEight model projects Landrieu losing by a 57.8% to 42.2% margin. It may not be the greatest defeat for an incumbent senator; however, it would be in the top 10. Mary Landrieu’s last gasp for any shot of winning reelection went up in flames with her “Fail Mary” XL Keystone pipeline Senate vote. That was pretty much, game, set and match for the incumbent. According to the RCP polling average, Cassidy leads Landrieu by 20.2 points.

By days end, the Republican party will have a +9 senate pickup for 2014.

The FiveThirtyEight model projects her losing the runoff 99.8 percent of the time, and by a 57.8 percent to 42.2 percent margin. That’s mostly based on polling, which can be unreliable in a low-turnout runoff.

What else do we know? The early voters in the Louisiana runoff have been vastly more Republican-leaning than early voters in last month’s election. And while whites were only 65 percent of early voters in November, they have been 70 percent for the runoff. Registered Republicans were only 34 percent of early voters in November, but they’ve been 39 percent of early voters for the runoff.

If this change in voter makeup holds on Saturday, it’s obviously very bad news for Landrieu. Assuming she wins the same percentage of white voters as Democratic candidates did in November, she’ll lose the runoff by roughly 60 percent to 40 percent, or about what the model forecasts.

A defeat that large would be the largest for an incumbent this year, topping Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor’s 17-point loss. It would come close to Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln’s 21-point loss in 2010, which ranks as the eighth-largest ever, as well as the largest loss for an incumbent since William Hathaway of Maine in 1978.