Historic Turnout In Louisiana

After no candidate received a majority of the votes in the October General Election, the race headed to a runoff between incumbent governor John Bel Edwards and Republican challenger Eddie Rispone. 

During Early Voting African Americans accounted for 31% of all voters during the runoff, giving Edwards a commanding lead heading into the election. 

John Bel Edwards won by over 40,000 votes helping him win the closest gubernatorial election in Louisiana since 1979.

Roughly 118,000 African Americans voted in the 2018 elections, but did not vote in the 2015 governors race. Starting in mid 2018 Field Strategies met with dozens of Louisiana stakeholders to design and fund a massive voter registration and turnout program.

We devised a campaign strategy with the primary goal of registering African American voters, transient voters, and returning citizens, under ACT 636, that had recently had their rights restored. 

Over the course of three months the team registered tens of thousands of new voters as well as newly eligible voters under Act 636.

Over the course of the program we deployed thousands of canvassers and knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors. Targeted voters received multiple layers of canvass passes, live and automated phone calls, radio, digital ads and mail. The program also took advantage of the national trend that suburban voters were moving our way to offset losses in the rural areas.