Jamie Davis rode the same wave that turned the nation blue in Tuesday night’s midterm elections, but that wave in Louisiana crested just short of sending the Democratic candidate to the Senate.
Buoyed by national revulsion to President Donald Trump, according to polling, Democrats flipped at least seven Republican seats to win a Senate majority. But , the Republican in Louisiana, squeaked past Davis with 50.88% of the vote to his 49.12%.
She won by a margin of 25,857 votes out of more than 1.4 million votes cast.
Davis conceded the race on Wednesday morning and congratulated Letlow on her victory.
Greg Rigamer, a pollster and demographer in New Orleans, estimated that Black voters turned out in big enough numbers in Louisiana to match their share of the electorate – 31.3% -- but that wasn’t quite enough. Black voters accounted for about 28% of the voters on Election Day, down significantly from 34.4% during the seven-day early voting period in late October, Rigamer said.
Here’s where Davis missed the mark: He received only about 25-27% of the White vote, according to Rigamer, when he needed about 28% of their vote.
The final tally was much closer than the six- to 10-point advantage Letlow had for three hours after the polls closed at 8 p.m. Davis came close only at the end because Orleans Parish, where he won an estimated 88% of the vote – his best showing in Louisiana – didn’t report its numbers until about 11:15 p.m.
A shockingly close race
Davis faced a huge hurdle to become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Louisiana in 18 years.
He was a political unknown at the beginning of the race, having won only a single race to serve on the Tensas Parish Police Jury. He lost his reelection bid four years later and lost a state House race after that.
Davis, 56, was taking on a seemingly impregnable red wall in Louisiana. All statewide elected officials in Louisiana are Republicans, the GOP holds two-thirds of the seats in the state Legislature and Trump won Louisiana by 22 points only two years earlier.
While Davis showed surprising strength, Letlow and super PACs supporting him raised about $9 million, while Davis collected about $5 million through Oct. 14, — with no money from the national Democratic Party, according to the latest campaign finance reports filed with the FEC.
Davis succeeded in winning a greater percentage of votes in all 64 parishes than did Kamala Harris when she was the Democratic candidate for president in 2024, according to a data analysis by Bishop George, a pollster in Shreveport.
“I think the biggest takeaway is he had no support and performed as well as he did,” George said.
James Carville, the famed Democratic strategist, shared that sentiment.
He was ecstatic that Democrats took control of the House and the Senate Tuesday, ousting House Speaker Mike Johnson from northwest Louisiana in the process.
But Carville, who had been saying for weeks that the national Democratic Party ought to invest in Davis, was frustrated at his narrow loss in Louisiana.
“They spent a gazillion dollars in Maine, Texas and Georgia,” Carville said. “It was a big playing field, and Louisiana got cut out. We missed a big opportunity. With another $750,000, Jamie would have won.”
Derek Babcock, who chairs the Louisiana Republican Party, said he was tracking Davis’ fund-raising and spending but said the Republican National Convention was not planning to come to Letlow’s aid in case the national Democratic Party stepped up.
Bob Mann, the author of books on Louisiana political history and a former 91 professor and Democratic staffer, also lamented the Democratic Party’s inattention to Davis but celebrated his achievement.
“With more than 720,000 votes, he received more votes than any Black candidate in Louisiana’s history, surpassing Cleo Fields’s previous record from the 1995 governor’s race,” Mann wrote in a Substack post. “That deserves much more attention than it’s received.”
Tuesday’s result was the closest Senate race in Louisiana in 30 years. Then state-Treasurer Mary Landrieu, a Democrat defeated then-state Rep. Woody Jenkins, a Republican, in 1996 by 5,788 votes out of 1,700,102 cast.
Race came down to the wire
Davis began to get people to think he could win when more Democrats than Republicans, 42% to 39%, showed up during early voting, and African-American voters turned out in disproportionately large numbers.
Babcock said his side used that news to sound the alarm to its voters.
“We put the word out to all of our constituents that it was very important for them to show up at the polls,” Babcock said. “I let everyone know we could lose the race if we didn’t show up, even though Louisiana is a red state.”
On Election Day, the Accountability Project, a super PAC funded by Trump and Gov. Jeff Landry, sent out a text to Republican and no-party voters where Sen. John Kennedy urged them to vote for Letlow.
“The loon wing of the Democrat Party wants this Louisiana Senate seat,” Kennedy said in the text.
In the aftermath of Davis’ loss, number-crunchers compared his performance to then-Gov. John Bel Edwards’ reelection results in 2019, when Edwards won by only 50,000 votes over Republican business owner Eddie Rispone.
Mitchell Klein, a data organizer for Davis’ campaign, found in an analysis of the 19 biggest parishes Wednesday that Davis out-performed Edwards’ percentage in Lafayette, Iberia, Bossier and Caddo parishes.
But he couldn’t keep pace with Edwards in Orleans, Jefferson, East Baton Rouge, St. Tammany and Calcasieu parishes.
At the same time, the turnout overall didn’t match the Davis campaign’s expectations. They were hoping for at least 1.6 million voters to cast ballots. The final number: 1,466,069 or 49% of registered voters, according to an estimate by the Secretary of State’s office.
George said that, while Davis gained ground everywhere in Louisiana compared to 2024, he did less so in north Louisiana, which is Letlow’s home base.
Still, George said Davis spent much less to secure his votes than did Letlow. Davis spent about $6.98 per vote, while Letlow spent $12.63, George said, based on FEC reports of contributions to each campaign and money spent by outside groups helping Letlow through Oct. 14.
What’s next for Letlow?
Letlow declared victory at 11:15 p.m. at her election night party at the University of Louisiana Monroe, her alma mater and where she worked as a senior staffer before winning her House seat in 2021.
Afterward, Letlow told reporters that after the Democrats’ strong night, “There are going to be a lot of conversations that we need to have as a party and how we can find unity again and start rebuilding.”
Letlow, 45, also she was looking forward to her upcoming marriage to her fiancée, Kevin Ainsworth, a lobbyist and lawyer in Baton Rouge.
Kyle Ruckert, who oversaw the Letlow campaign, said too many people discounted Letlow’s political abilities.
“She beat a two-term senator, a statewide elected official and survived a massive blue wave,” Ruckert said. “She stayed on message, connected with voters and was an amazing candidate.”