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At first, if you were watching the returns, it looked like Huckabee would be rolling into a ten-point victory over John McCain. But then East Baton Rouge, Orleans, and Lafayette parishes all came in, and they all went for McCain. Huckabee held onto win by only 2,000 votes, remarkable when you consider how many different parishes Huckabee carried. McCain is in red; Huckabee is in pink.

McCain won Assumption, Avoyelles, East Baton Rouge, Evangeline, Iberville, Jefferson, Lafayette, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. Martin, St. Mary, St. Tammany, Terrebonne, West Baton Rouge, and West Feliciana parishes.

2 thoughts

  1. It is simply not possible for Ron Paul to have LOST votes after the provisional ballots were ADDED in. How, then, did he go from 2nd place, to fourth with just 5%? There is something terribly untrustworthy about our current election system…

  2. According to the Louisiana Secretary of State, with 100% reporting, Ron Paul finished in 3rd place in 21 parishes. (That is, Paul beat Romney, who suspended in his campaign in 21 parishes). Romney beat Ron Paul in 43 parishes.

    Ron Paul broke 1,000 votes in only one parish, East Baton Rouge, where he finished with 2,162 votes. And Romney still finished ahead.

    And although he finished in third place in 21 parishes, he only broke into the triple digits in 15 parishes (and they include parishes like Lafayette, where he still trailed Romney).

    Paul definitely attracts a ton of independent support; I’d imagine that he never runs well in closed primaries. Provisional ballots are typically filled out by voters who encounter registration problems (i.e. Independents who don’t realize they can’t vote in closed primaries or people who didn’t remember changing parties). I’ve heard that some of this confusion could be the result of how many parishes allow people to change (unwittingly) their voter registration when they renew their drivers licenses.

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