Pollster Ron Faucheux of Faucheux Strategies, who writes a weekly column for The Times-Picayune | The Advocate, recently conducted a statewide poll for the newspaper. He sat down with Managing Editor for Opinions Arnessa Garrett and columnist Stephanie Grace to dive more deeply into the results. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Grace: Ron, did anything in this poll surprise you?
Faucheux: I was surprised at how negatively voters rated Gov. Jeff Landry’s handling of insurance. I thought his honeymoon would have included that, but it didn’t. And it looks to me like that's something that he and other state officials need to watch, because that issue could blow up on the whole group. I was surprised there wasn’t more discussion of insurance during the governor’s race.
In terms of the governor's favorable rating, 56%, I didn't think that was exceptionally surprising. Donald Trump gets 58-59% of the state’s vote, so it’s not unreasonable to think that a new conservative governor on his honeymoon would be getting close to that.
Grace: Those 56% to 59% numbers, that's been the Republican total for statewide elections for a while now, in Senate races and presidential races with people who are actually Trump’s enemies, like John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Garrett: Looking deeper into those numbers, on the race and party breakdowns of the governor's rating — there was talk in the campaign that Landry was getting more Black support than a lot of Republican candidates.
Faucheux: Landry now has a 37% favorable rating among Black voters, which, for a conservative pro-Trump Republican is a lot, at least historically. And even with Democrats, he gets 36%.
Now, I suspect some of that is honeymoon approval, where people say, “Well, the guy just got the job, let's give him a chance to do it.” I think voters tend to be very fair about things like that. They don't want to rush to judgment.
Garrett: Why do a poll this early into an administration?
Faucheux: This is a benchmark of where Landry starts, and it gives us a good sense of what his coalition looks like and what some of the big issues are.
Grace: You really sorted some of the findings into Republicans who are very strongly pro-Trump and those who are not, with this idea that we have a Republican majority, but it's a big tent.
Faucheux: That was one of the most interesting findings. There’s a perception that you're either for Trump or you're against him, and it's not 100% both ways. Yes, he has a hard base. Plus, he also has support among some Democrats and significant support among independents. But even just looking at Republicans, 42-43% are not rock-solid Trump supporters.
We also see the divide with progressive Democrats versus more moderate Democrats. I think what it shows is that progressive Democrats and rock-solid Trump Republicans are very, very far apart — but when you look at the more moderate Democrats and the less solid Trump Republicans, those two groups are much closer.
And you really saw that in the poll on issues like abortion and guns, where there were big differences between the rock-solid Trump supporters and the less solid ones. We saw it on Landry's popularity; he had 80% of the rock-solid Trump Republicans, but 63% of the less solid Trump Republicans; that's a big difference.
Clearly, there's a more moderate faction within the Republican Party. That's significant.
Garrett: So if you were a lawmaker or the governor, what would you take from that as you're looking at these hot-button issues? Would you pay less attention to some of them and more attention to the “center” issues?
Faucheux: I would, and I think Republican officials need to understand that there are degrees within their party, and that you can go too far. Same thing for Democrats; the difference between the progressive Democrats and more moderate Democrats is significant as well.
Now, will somebody in the future attempt to put together a coalition of more moderate Democrats and less solid Trump Republicans?
Grace: Well, didn’t people try that during the governor race? That was the “anybody but Landry” idea that went nowhere.
Faucheux: Yes, but most of the unsuccessful Republican candidates in the governor’s race still stuck pretty closely to the party line on hot-button social issues, even though they projected a more moderate tone and temperament. And I think it's because of the national polarization we’re seeing, that Democrats are still looking at Republicans as evil, and Republicans are looking at Democrats as evil, and it's hard for each to consider something else. But based on issues, on voter attitudes, the factions are there within each party.
Garrett: And that’s happening in the Legislature, maybe, that those moderates are starting to break away.
Faucheux: It does seem that is happening, that Landry and the Republican leadership will come up with something, and everybody assumes it's going to pass. And then all of a sudden, there's a whole series of amendments.
Politicians oftentimes operate on good instincts, not good data. And even though they may not have the data, instinctively they may feel, “Wait a minute. This is going too far even for Louisiana.” Normally you would think Louisiana, being a one-party Republican state, would be pretty tough on guns, for instance, and pretty tough on abortion. But when you actually look at the numbers, Louisiana is more conservative than the nation as a whole, but not dramatically so.
We’re talking about Republicans because they’re the ones in power, but almost all these things apply to Democrats too.
Grace: A majority of Louisiana voters said they were in favor of more abortion rights, even though Louisiana has traditionally been considered the most anti-abortion state in the country. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, has the landscape really changed?
Faucheux: I think it has, and it’s happening all over the country. We have 54% in Louisiana saying we should expand abortion rights for the first 15 weeks. What most upsets pro-life voters is the idea of getting an abortion all the way through a pregnancy.
Grace: Which is much of the rhetoric on the Republican side nationally.
Faucheux: But now, some anti-abortion Republican candidates nationally have gotten to a point where they don't want to be accused of supporting a total ban on abortion.
If you compare these numbers to national numbers, Louisiana is still considerably to the right of classic swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, but there is the making of a majority that would support expansion of abortion rights with limits. And one of the things we see all over the country is that the 15-week limit tends to be the one spot that can bring together a good portion of both sides. It would seem to make sense for the pro-life community to support a 15-week limit in liberal states and the pro-choice community to support a 15-week limit in conservative states. Of course, I’m talking about what’s politically effective and possible. But each side still has to take into account their fundamental beliefs and morality when taking political positions.
Now the problem for Louisiana’s Republican politicians is, even though 35% of Republicans would support expanding abortion rights during the first 15 weeks, it’s 71% for Democrats and 59% for independents. So when Republican politicians look at those numbers, they think “we have to please the Republicans first and then the independents and then the Democrats.” So that's why it doesn't instantly translate to a majority of the Legislature.
Garrett: Talk about the messaging on crime. Outside of constitutional carry, it seems like voters were supportive of some of these tough-on-crime measures that activists on the left oppose.
Faucheux: Again, you have a similar situation where 69% of Republicans are taking what might be considered the more conservative viewpoint on crime, and Republican legislators have to satisfy that 69% before they get to the independents, where it’s down to 53% and to Democrats at 36%. And one thing we are seeing in this poll is that there are about 30-some percent of Democrats and the same percentage of Republicans that are not always going along with their party's line on many divisive social issues.
Voters are voting with their team, but they don’t always agree with their team on some issues.
Grace: We’ve seen Black communities that vote Democratic where there's a lot of crime, and people do not want to defund the police. And on the Republican side, you've had a lot of activism on criminal justice reform among libertarians and evangelicals.
Faucheux: When you look at this with African Americans, what you see is that crime and violence is their number one issue; it is with most people in the state, but it's even higher among Black voters. And a sizable 39% of Black voters pick the tougher position on criminal justice.
There's little difference between the perceptions of White and Black voters that crime is important. But then the political community, the pundit community, the interest group community — they start pulling people apart for their own interests. And nobody in politics has figured out a way to handle that
Garrett: It seems like, from all these numbers, there could be like a foundation for a new kind of populism, where you're tough on crime, you’re moderate on abortion. It seems like someone could figure out how to carve that out.
Faucheux: I think the political opportunity is there. It's just that neither national party likes that prospect.
Grace: And can I add another factor to that? Let's go back to the insurance question. Anti-big business.
Faucheux: Exactly. Voters here, like around the country, have a strong inclination against big — against big government, big corporations. And that cuts across a lot of lines; one of the things Trump was able to do, even as a billionaire, was to became the candidate of the average voter against big corporations, against the establishment, against big government. And, of course, many progressives oppose big corporations and the establishment, too. But there is another aspect of this for governors. The big corporations they would campaign against are also the companies that can bring a lot of jobs to their states, jobs they need for their states, so they have to be careful.
Grace: On insurance, this seems to be the issue where there’s the biggest disconnect between the political class and the people you interviewed, who are very, very upset with the problems they’re having and the approach taken by government, which is: Let's give the insurance companies free rein in the hope that more of them will come and create competition and eventually, hopefully, lower rates.
Faucheux: Politicians in both parties are doing very badly explaining issues to the voters. They think all you have to do is use the slogans and people will attach to the slogans. That may be true on some issues, but it's not true on something like insurance and that affects people so directly.