Louisiana gubernatorial election, 1991

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The Louisiana gubernatorial election of 1991 resulted in the election of Edwin Edwards to his fourth non-consecutive term as governor of Louisiana. The election received national and international attention due to the unexpectedly strong showing of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, who had ties to other white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

[edit] Background

Elections in Louisiana—with the exception of U.S. presidential elections—follow a variation of the open primary system called the jungle primary. Candidates of any and all parties are listed on one ballot; voters need not limit themselves to the candidates of one party. Unless one candidate takes more than 50% of the vote in the first round, a run-off election is then held between the top two candidates, who may in fact be members of the same party.[2] In this election, the first round of voting was held on October 19, 1991, and the runoff was held on November 16.

[edit] Results

First voting round, October 19

Candidate	Party affiliation	Votes received	Percentage of votes cast
Edwin Edwards	Democrat	523,096	34%
David Duke	Republican	491,342	32%
Buddy Roemer	Republican	410,690	27%
Clyde C. Holloway	Republican	82,683	5%
Sam S. Jones	Democrat	11,847	1%
Ed Karst	None/Other	9,663	1%
Fred Dent	Democrat	7,385	0%
Anne Thompson	Republican	4,118
Jim Crowley	Democrat	4,000
Albert Henderson Powell	Democrat	2,053
Ronnie Glynn Johnson	None/Other	1,372
Ken "Cousin Ken" Lewis	Democrat	1,006