David Duke’s Political Future

Can David Duke, the landslide loser in Louisiana, remain a force in American politics? Simple numbers, among other things, suggest that he can.

White voters did, after all, cast 55% of their votes for Duke. Only the nearly unanimous black vote against him caused the landslide loss. But in Louisiana, 31% of the voters are black--about 2 1/2 times as large a percentage as the black vote nationwide.

If Louisiana’s black and white votes for Duke and Edwin Edwards, respectively, had been cast by a nationwide electorate, Duke would have received approximately 47.5% of the vote--not the inauspicious 39% he received in the state. That’s hardly a landslide defeat, and not bad for a sleaze-ball politician so recently associated with the politics of racial hatred.

Were Duke to challenge George Bush in Republican primaries next year (with or without Pat Buchanan in the mix), he would almost certainly be defeated and never have a chance to test his electoral strength nationwide. But as an independent third-party candidate, with the kind of media coverage he inspires, his impact could be substantial.

Irrespective of ultimate vote counts, the Nov. 16 numbers suggest (especially if the recession persists) that we’ll see and hear a lot more of Duke--and his message--before we can consign him to the extremist scrapheap.

WALTER WELLS, Carson