Louisiana voters voted on Saturday in a runoff election that opinion polls indicate will expand Republicans' majority in the US Senate at the expense of one of the chamber's last remaining southern Democrats. Republican US Representative Bill Cassidy is challenging three-term incumbent Mary Landrieu, who is fighting to remain one of only two Democratic senators from the southeastern US - a party stronghold a generation ago - after losses last month by Democratic incumbents in Arkansas and North Carolina.
Cassidy has run a disciplined campaign focused on linking Landrieu to President Barack Obama, who is deeply unpopular among whites in Louisiana, and is leading by more than 20 percentage points, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls in recent weeks. "It's a campaign that has been very methodical and careful and doesn't do stupid things," said John Couvillon, a Louisiana pollster working mostly for Republicans.
If victorious, Cassidy would be the ninth Republican to capture a previously Democratic seat this year. The runoff is being held because no candidate secured a majority in the November 4 open primary. In the Landrieu stronghold of New Orleans, Brooks Young, a political independent working at a solar energy firm, said he voted for Cassidy. "We need a change," said Young, 26. "Mary Landrieu's been in there for a long time." Landrieu, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has campaigned on her clout, a message complicated by her party's loss of Senate control.
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