Leading Off:
•LA-Gov: The early voting period for Louisiana's runoff election ended on Saturday, and 257,021 people have voted early, a 9.5 percent increase compared to October's jungle primary. Notably, the state's official early voting statistics, released Sunday, showed that early voting rose disproportionately in parishes in which Democrat John Bel Edwards is expected to do well.
Turnout also went up among registered Democrats and among African-Americans. The share of the early voting electorate who are registered Democrats is 52.6 percent. That's significantly higher from early voting in both the primary (50.6 percent) and in the 2014 Senate runoff (49 percent). Meanwhile, the share of the black vote stands at 29.7 percent, up from 27.7 percent in the primary and 28 percent in the 2014 runoff. (However, the share of the black vote in the early voting electorate for the November 2014 Senate jungle primary was 33 percent.)
But these numbers all come with a big warning label attached: early voting statistics should not be used to predict results. For one thing, we don't know how many early voters would have just voted on Election Day, and we also don't know how many are showing up now when they stayed home last time.
More importantly, they shed absolutely no light on whether Edwards is getting enough crossover support from Republicans, or whether he's improving on Democrat Mary Landrieu's performance among white voters last year-two things, among many, he will need to do to win the runoff. That said, early voting statistics can at least warn a party that it is facing a turnout problem, and based on these numbers, there is good reason for Democrats to believe that their voters are not staying home. For a detailed look at all the data, check out Taniel's comprehensive analysis.