NEW ORLEANS — An analysis of 32,000 signatures on the petition to recall New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell shows a stark disparity in support, with a campaign driven largely by white voters concentrated in the city's affluent neighborhoods.
The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate analyzed the thousands of signatures by creating a random sample by selecting every 42nd signature and collecting additional details about a signer's race, age, party affiliation, and home address through the Orleans Parish voter files.
The sample included 757 records which also included 35 signers that were not Orleans Parish voters and six others that were duplicates. The newspaper said the sample yields a margin of error of about plus or minus 3.6%.
It is important to note that the recall effort has reportedly withheld thousands of additional public documents from the newspaper, which could potentially change the paper's findings.
According to the paper's analysis of the sample, nearly 76% of those voters were White, compared to 15% who were Black. New Orleans is a majority Black city.
The sampled signatures also show the recall effort was concentrated in the city's affluent neighborhoods like Lakeview and Uptown. Roughly 37% of sampled signatures came from those two areas, despite those neighbors only containing 13% of the city's population.
The sampled signers also skewed older, with a median age of 54, which is eight years higher than New Orleans as a whole.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.