On Friday, @LaPoliticsNow reported that someone had shared with him a pro- @RunWithJason's "push poll" showing Williams in a "statistical dead heat" with Keva Landrum for Orleans Parish DA. That is, "barely ahead" but still w/in the MoE.

"While a push poll is just a push poll and nothing more, those participants who self-identified as hyper-chronic voters were solidly w/ Williams (in a low turnout election), his ground game is said to be strong and a recent robocall from singer John Legend probably didn’t hurt."

Landrum, as Jeremy Alford noted, "has a team of notables pushing her candidacy and shouldn’t be counted out until all of the votes are in."

Frankly, since Nov. 3, I think the conventional wisdom had been that she was solidly ahead.

Tonight, Williams won 58-42. What happened?

Obviously, he finished astonishingly strong, and he may have also benefitted from a surge of opposition against the Mayor's controversial proposition to defund the public libraries. (Landrum ran with the endorsement of the Mayor).

Early voting numbers are notable, but don't tell the whole story. Williams beat Landrum 52-48 among early voters, but the early vote on Prop 2 was 52-48 in favor of passage. (Prop 2 ultimately failed 57-43).

I understand that more than 35% of the early votes were cast on the final day. By then, the narrative against Prop 2 had begun to emerge, and Williams had kicked his own campaign into high gear.

I imagine that the results on the final day of early voting looked dramatically different. It seems more likely than not that Landrum had been leading in the early vote until the final day, perhaps by as much as 5 points.

The shift may not be immediately identifiable, but it happened.

There's another point that needs to be emphasized: As Alford reported, Williams had a solid "ground game." I'd heard separately that it was far better than his opponent's. Even in a pandemic, that matters.