Verne Kennedy, whose polls influenced decades of Louisiana politics, is dead at 83

Only political insiders knew his name, but Verne Kennedy played a significant role for decades in deciding who would be elected governor of Louisiana.

Kennedy was a pollster whose survey results helped candidates craft messages for voters. Former governors Edwin Edwards and David Treen were among his clients.

Kennedy’s data also helped business owners decide who to bet their money on.

Kennedy earned a reputation for accuracy because he relied on the numbers and historical trends, not on hunches.

Kennedy, 83, died on Feb. 28 in Gulf Breeze, Florida. He had two children and was married to his wife Martha for 61 years.

Kennedy grew up at Jackson Barracks in New Orleans — his mother’s father Raymond Fleming was the adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard for 28 years — and went on to obtain a Ph.D. from LSU.

After serving as a college professor and for eight years as president of Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, Kennedy devoted himself full time to his company, Market Research Insight. The company would go on to conduct over 5,000 marketing and political surveys in all 50 states.

Besides working for candidates, Kennedy did polling for a group of about 20 business owners for Louisiana governor’s races from 1995 through 2023.

“We wanted to pick someone who wasn’t in Louisiana or was tied to any candidate and did good research,” said Randy Haynie, a veteran lobbyist in Baton Rouge who was a member of the group that hired Kennedy. “We trusted Verne. He gave us the numbers straight up.”

John Georges, who owns The Advocate | The Times-Picayune, was the organizer of the group for many years.

“He was about the science and not the art of politics,” Georges said.

Kennedy didn’t just poll on governor’s races in Louisiana. In Jefferson Parish, for example, he did surveys for such candidates as former Sheriff Newell Normand and former assessor Lawrence Chehardy, said Bob d’Hemecourt, a veteran political operative.

In 2022, Kennedy was inducted into the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame.

In 2023, Kennedy told the business group that his data showed something that few were predicting: then-Attorney General Jeff Landry had a shot at being elected governor outright in the primary. And that’s what happened.

The business group always offered to have Kennedy explain his findings to the different campaigns in race, although not all of the candidates liked what they heard.

That was especially true during the 2015 governor’s race.

Kennedy’s first poll in May that year showed then-U.S. Sen. David Vitter, the Republican who was the heavy favorite, leading with 36% of the vote, with John Bel Edwards, a little-known Democratic state representative, running second with 27%.

But because African-American voters typically gave 90% of their vote to the Democratic candidate, Kennedy redistributed the numbers by giving 90% of the undecided Black voters to Edwards. That gave him 35%, and as news of Kennedy’s survey spread, Edwards suddenly gained credibility as a candidate among the political class.

In July, after Kennedy re-allocated 90% of the African-American vote to Edwards, his numbers showed the Democrat leading with 34%, while Vitter and then-Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle, a Republican, both had 21%. Given that virtually all voters knew Vitter from his years in public office, Kennedy deduced that Vitter had little room to grow.

Kennedy advised Vitter’s campaign manager, Kyle Ruckert, that Vitter ought to seriously consider not even qualifying for the fall election. Instead, Ruckert went into damage control mode and publicly blasted Kennedy, saying he had engaged in “fantasy land polling.”

The pollster threatened to sue Vitter for libel. He didn’t follow through on that because he ended up getting the last laugh.

Edwards soundly defeated Vitter in the runoff election, 56% to 44%.