Emotions Run High as Louisiana Election Nears : Politics: Duke opponents are shocked that the ex-klan leader could get so much support. A rally for him shows tangible exhilaration.

For the 600 students at predominantly black Southern University who crowded into an assembly hall for a rally here, the issue on the table was their future in a state governed by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

But what filled the air Wednesday afternoon was the past, lingering in sharp, precise images they are too young to remember: riding in the back of the bus, drawing water from a fountain marked Colored, fearing to disdain a man wearing a sheet.

“We have a man who represents that part of our history when blacks were not considered people,” the Rev. Avery Alexander told the audience, who clapped and stomped and chanted: “No Dukes.”

Only eight hours later, an audience of over 3,000 working- and middle-class whites gathered at a racetrack outside Lafayette with their retort: a ringing chant of “More Dukes” as the candidate worked his way through the crowd.

Amid signs that Duke’s support may have crested, emotions are running high across Louisiana in the final frantic hours before Saturday’s gubernatorial election between the Republican state legislator and three-time former Democratic Gov. Edwin W. Edwards.

The sense of shock among Duke’s opponents that a former klan leader could attract so much support--and the tangible exhilaration evident among his backers--have collided like storm fronts to produce an election that has devoured all other concerns in this state. Most analysts expect turnout on Saturday will easily exceed the record 70% of registered voters who cast ballots in the 1979 gubernatorial run-off.

Three new polls released Wednesday show Edwards with a lead of at least six points over Duke--even after adjusting the results to compensate for the tendency of some Duke supporters to disguise their intentions. But few are willing to predict an Edwards victory, in part because Edwards, who has weathered two trials on federal racketeering charges, is still enormously unpopular among many white voters.

Still, Duke has been placed on the defensive to a greater degree than at any point since his 1989 election to the state Legislature--with accusations that he has misrepresented his religious experience and also indications that he remains in touch with extremist groups. Duke has also been buffeted by an almost nonstop barrage of radio and print advertisements launched from a flotilla of hastily formed organizations.

All this activity has slowed Duke--but it has also provided him with new targets. “I know the people of this state are too proud to allow outsiders to dictate who our leaders are,” he told the crowd Wednesday night at Evangeline Downs racetrack in Carencro. “I owe nothing to . . . the big powerful political endorsements.”

There is some evidence that argument is working. Over two-thirds of those polled in the Mason-Dixon survey earlier this week agreed that Louisiana “voters should send a message to outsiders to mind their own business.”

“Neither one of them is worth a damn to vote for,” said Marie Fotenot, a homemaker from Carencro. “But Duke, I’ll give him a chance. It can’t get any worse, that’s the main thing.”

Even if Duke falls short in tomorrow’s voting, the power of the resentments he stokes will provide him with more political opportunities, such as a race for Congress.