On Monday, John Couvillon, President and CEO of JMC Analytics and Polling discussed the election, the Treasurer’s race, the New Orleans Mayor’s race other contests during a Facebook Live discussion with Bayoubuzz’s Publisher Stephen Sabludowsky.

Couvillon was not a disinterred party watching the election from afar.  He polled for one of the candidates Angele Davis, who came in third. He discussed his poll results during the last part of the interview which will be published later this week.

Today’s portion focuses upon the poor statewide turnout, why Edwards won and how Schroder pulled out to win the runoff spot.

Below are highlights of the first segment of the interview. The text is a good transcribed version of the discussion, however, to obtain the entire interview of this segment, do watch the video below.

what happened this weekend first off there was very low turnout I would say it is probably the worst I have ever seen for statewide race and that's going as far back as the last time I remember turnout this low when it was still in the 20s it was the 2006 special elections for Secretary of State in for Insurance Commissioner that was held in September of 2006

the thing that was interesting was that thirteen and a half percent was artificially bolstered by the fact that you had New Orleans mayor race and of course you have the city council races and other parish wide races in Orleans resulting in New Orleans having a disproportionate impact relative to prior election cycles.

More specifically Orleans Parish is typically about eight to ten percent of the statewide vote, Saturday night it was nearly twenty percent which I've not seen before so given that you had the backdrop of low turnout, believe it or not it did not really impact the results that much other than to add a point or two to Derek Edwards's margin because of course he overwhelmingly carried Orleans Parish.

Like I thought he would now coming in second place John Schroeder eked out a 9,500 vote victory over on Angele Davis and then Neil Riser finished fourth and then you had the two other candidates who together got about five percent.

The thing that I think is interesting when you're dissecting those top four candidates was how the specific areas of strengths and weaknesses amongst the four.  Derrick Edwards I never doubted for a minute would make the runoff, because of course, he had number one the Democratic Party label he was the only Democrat number. Two this is not the kind of thing I'm allowed to say but I'll say it anyway because he had the last name of Edwards 

I think that that's the kind of name that some people gonna see it on the ballot some may be thinking they're voting for Edwards Edwin, rather some may be thinking they're voting for John Bel.   But point being is-- being a Democrat having a last name of Edwards I would argue to a Democratic primary base is an asset, and so of course, my polling always showed that Derek Edwards was in the lead and that in fact is what happened he coalesced the black vote getting about 75% not only statewide but more specifically in Orleans Parish.  

That's a point I'm going to come back to in a few minutes so Derek Edwards basically got the Democratic base vote, he also got about 15 percent of the white vote statewide. "He received 35 percent of the White vote (in Orleans Parish)--which again given that Orleans has a more liberal electorate across the board. So Derek Edwards started off with a Democratic base and that, in fact ,is what he ended up with when he won, took first place finish in a statewide race.

What John Schroeder did I would say, first off, congratulations to him for running a good campaign but more specifically John Schroeder I would say there was one word that characterized his campaign from start to finish--that one word is dominance by dominance what I'm referring to is that John Schroeder started off early and he had an incredible amount of self-discipline in terms of raising money-- as far back in my memory as January and steadily lining up the endorsements, building up an impressive war chest that enabled him to dominate the airwaves in the month of September.

So from that standpoint which is the self discipline that enables you to amass a huge war chest considering that not many people wanted to give to a down-ballot race this year, you have to give them, you have to give him credit, where it's due--that he did what it took to win he had the dominance across the state, more specifically, in the New Orleans suburbs and that dominance enabled him to eke out a 9500 vote margin over Angele Davis.