Iberville turnout tops state

• By MARSHA SHULER
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Oct 7, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Iberville Parish registered the highest turnout anywhere in the state in Saturday’s balloting with more than half of its voters participating, Louisiana’s top election official said Monday.

Of the suburban Baton Rouge parish’s 21,231 voters, 54.5 percent cast ballots in the Louisiana Supreme Court race. Incumbent Democrat Kitty Kimball won over Republican challenger Jeff Hughes.

Meanwhile, 39.4 percent of the 268,701 registered voters in East Baton Rouge Parish voted. Incumbent Mayor-President Kip Holden won in a landslide.

Across the river in West Baton Rouge Parish, the Supreme Court race attracted 45.5 percent of the 15,144 registered voters.

Voter turnout is based on the race with the most ballots cast, according to the Secretary of State’s Office, the state office that oversees elections.

Ascension turnout hit 32.8 percent and Livingston was at 30.1 percent.

Statewide, voter turnout stood at 29.8 percent — short of pre-election predictions that between 35 percent and 40 percent of Louisiana’s 2.88 million voters would participate.

“I was a little optimistic based on the races we had and the seeming interest we had in races across the state,” Secretary of State Jay Dardenne said Monday.

East Baton Rouge Parish was within the range of what he predicted, Dardenne said.

But other areas such as Caddo and Orleans parishes, where congressional party primary elections were on the ballot and a lot of campaign money was spent, fell far below projections, Dardenne said.

Caddo turnout was 29.7 percent with Democratic and Republican congressional party primaries on the ballot. In Orleans, where there was a hotly contested Democratic congressional primary, only 22.4 percent of the voters participated.

In the Orleans-based 2nd congressional district, indicted Democratic U.S. Rep. William Jefferson made a runoff.

The low turnout in Caddo Parish was of particular surprise, Dardenne said.