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TURNOUT WATCH

Louisiana's all-party primary Saturday saw the highest voter turnout for a state legislative election since 2003, when Democrats still dominated the state. Yesterday's election put an end to that dominance, as the rural surge toward Republicans that has happened in state after state finally came to southwest and northeast Louisiana, flipping a number of state House and Senate seats. Gov. John Bel Edwards, one of just two Democratic governors in the South, was forced into a November runoff — despite winning more first-round votes than any Democratic candidate for governor in 36 years.

It's simple: Louisiana holds a “jungle primary,” in which everyparty's candidates compete, and a runoff, in which the top two finishers face off if no one got 50 percent of the vote. From 2015 to 2019, statewide primary turnout jumped from 1,114,336 votes to 1,343,478 votes. Edwards won 626,000 votes, which in other years would have been enough for a first-round victory. But Republicans Eddie Rispone and Ralph Abraham got a combined 685,433 votes; four years ago, the credible Republican candidates running against Edwards got a combined 637,938 votes.

The president immediately took credit for the turnout, tweeting incorrectly that Edwards had been polling at 66 percent until a “Keep America Great” rally in Lake Charles, La., this week. (Polling had put Edwards in the high 40s, with a few outliers putting him above 50 percent.) But the