Former President Donald Trump should easily win the state’s electoral votes in the November presidential election, according to a poll commissioned by The Advocate | The Times-Picayune.
While Trump should coast to victory in Louisiana, his numbers may not be as overwhelming as they have been in the past, the poll found. Notably, the poll also found Trump's support could sag if he is convicted of a crime before the election, though not by nearly enough to put Louisiana's eight electoral votes in play.
In November 2020, Trump beat President Joe Biden by 18.6 percentage points — attracting 58% of Louisiana’s total vote to Biden’s 40%. The poll found Trump with a slightly smaller margin, beating Biden by 14 or 15 percentage points for 52% of the total vote to Biden's 38% in a head-to-head contest.
The Republican candidates have polled 57% to 59% of Louisiana voters in every presidential election since 2004. George W. Bush attracted 53% of Louisiana’s vote in 2000, according to the Secretary of State. Bill Clinton in 1996 was the last Democratic candidate to win Louisiana in a presidential contest.
Trump's numbers fall somewhat when minor candidates are included, but Trump still wins easily, the poll found.
The poll showed Trump with 48% and Biden with 33% if three third-party candidates — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West — were also offered as choices.
Pollster Ron Faucheux conducted the survey for The Advocate | The Times-Picayune. His firm spoke with 800 registered voters across the state between April 22 to April 26, primarily on cellphones. The poll's margin of error is 3.5%.
Statewide poll for The Advocate | The Times-Picayune
The newspaper's poll found that Trump's Louisiana support could erode if he is convicted in one of the four criminal cases he faces, including one case that is being tried right now. On Tuesday, while Biden was memorializing the dead at Holocaust Remembrance Day events, Trump was sitting in a courtroom hearing salacious details of his alleged sexual encounter with a porn star, Baton Rouge native Stormy Daniels, that is at the heart of allegations that he improperly paid hush money to keep the details from being published during the 2016 election.
The Advocate | The Times-Picayune survey found that a conviction could cost Trump between 2% and 9% of his support in Louisiana. Even then, he'd still win the state comfortably, but similar erosion in battleground states could be consequential.
“I don’t know what the deal is with Trump. It’s pure chaos,” said Gerald Davis, 59, a Republican from Lake Charles who participated in the poll.
Davis said he voted for Trump in the past but isn't sure what he’ll do in November. “I don’t like that his conduct is so disrespectful," he said.
In 2020, Trump won 55 of the state’s 64 parishes — 16 parishes with 75% of the vote or more. He polled exceptionally well in predominantly White rural parishes in north Louisiana and Acadiana. Nationally, Trump is polling well among White male, blue-collar workers, many of whom live outside urban centers and feel government policy has bypassed them. About 30% of the state’s households are in rural areas, according to the latest U.S. Census figures.
Biden won the cities of New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Shreveport, where a younger and more ethnically diverse population lives. He also won predominantly Black parishes along the Mississippi River north and south of Baton Rouge.
Trump won most of Louisiana's suburbs, but narrowly. This year, Trump advisers are most concerned about suburban precincts, which usually skew Republican but have been hesitating to follow traditional lines recently, in part because of the GOP’s hard stance against abortion.
It's unclear what the role of secondary candidates will be in this fall's election. In 2020, their role was small: 11 minority candidates collectively took just 1.6% of the votes.
The newspaper's poll suggests they will be a bigger factor in 2024, especially Kennedy, a 70-year-old environmental lawyer running without party affiliation. When the other candidates are included, Trump takes 48% of the votes to Biden’s 33%, according to the survey. Kennedy ran next, at 10%, followed by West, with 2%, and Stein, with 1%. Another 6% of the respondents just don’t know who they’d back.
Kennedy is best known for his pedigree — the son of an attorney general and nephew of a president and a U.S. senator — though his family has endorsed Biden. He was a prominent anti-vaxxer during the pandemic and has both of the major candidates concerned he'll draw votes from them.
In Louisiana, Kennedy does better among more moderate Democrats, polling 12%, than among progressive Democrats, where he’s the choice of 5%. He also does better among less-reliable Trump Republicans, at 13%, than among rock-solid Trump Republicans, with whom he's under 1%.
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How the poll was conducted
Faucheux Strategies, a nonpartisan research firm based in Louisiana, interviewed a representative sample of 800 registered voters across Louisiana between April 22-26.
Trained professionals conducted the interviews by telephone; 79% of them were contacted on cell phones and 21% on landlines.
The calls were based on a scientifically selected, random sample of state voters. The racial composition of the sample was 64% White, 30% Black and 6% other. For this poll, “independent” includes people who have no party affiliation and people who are affiliated with a third party. The poll’s margin of error is +/- 3.46%.
