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Julia Letlow narrowly wins Louisiana U.S. Senate seat after unexpectedly tight race against Jamie Davis
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BATON ROUGE — Julia Letlow won Louisiana's U.S. Senate race after a much tighter contest than many expected.
As results came in across Louisiana, supporters of Julia Letlow and Jamie Davis watched what had been expected to be an easy race for Letlow grow much closer. In the end, Letlow beat Davis by just under 2 percentage points.
Robert Hogan, a professor of political science at LSU, says a national blue wave had an impact in Louisiana. He says Letlow won by a little more than 25,000 votes after a race that looked like she might run away with.
Hogan says Davis performed better than most Democrats have at the state level in Louisiana. He says it is unusual for a Democrat to come that close in the state.
On election night, Davis would not commit to running for another office such as governor next year, but he also did not rule it out.
Hogan says Democrats did not help Davis's campaign and that major advertising buys might have changed the result. He says the near miss could lead Democrats to invest more resources in future Louisiana races.
"They didn't help out in any way Jamie Davis's campaign, and had they come in with major advertising buys, it's possible he could have won," he said.
Over the last 30 years, Louisiana's Black statewide candidates had topped out between 30 percent and 44 percent of the vote; only Kip Holden reached 45 percent in 2015.
This year, Davis won 49 percent of the vote while Letlow won 51 percent. In 2022, Republican John Kennedy won 62 percent of the vote.
Hogan says turnout was higher than it was in 2022. He says turnout in African American communities and parishes was higher than in previous elections.
"I think you're going to see Democrats being in some way enthused by this near miss to the degree that they start investing resources in the state and thinking about ways to propel their candidates for higher office," he said.
The Democratic Party told WBRZ that Davis has not ruled out contesting the election results. WBRZ reached out to Davis' campaign to confirm and is waiting for a response.
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