Within a few hours after the primary was decided, requests for Anybody But Batt yard signs at this website jumped dramatically. Perhaps some voters smell blood and (to mix our metaphors) want to pile on.

In light of this, we think Jay should concede. It would save him, Ms Guidry, and District A from a bruising runoff campaign. Jay took a big hit in this election, and is no longer the front runner. While we are loathe to hit a man while he is down, we will continue to alert the public to the facts about Mr. Batt if he chooses to run. A victory by Jay, while not mathematically impossible, is highly unlikely. The question is what will Jay put first: District A or his ego.

Read on for our by-the-numbers analysis of the primary vote...

In Saturday's primary, Jay only got 39% of the vote, and he finished second. Four years ago in the primary, he got 40% and finished ahead of Shelley Midura, who received only 28% of the vote. That left a pool of 32% who had voted for the other candidates, which we will call the "undecided" vote.

In the runoff against Shelley, Jay only moved from 40% to 48.5%, which means he only got 25% of the "undecided" vote. This time, there is only a 16.5% "undecided" vote, which would mean that Batt would have to get almost 70% of the "undecided" to win, far more than the 25% he captured in 2006.

In the 2006 runoff, Jay had the endorsements of Sal Palmisano and Stephen Saussy, who had captured a combined 16% of the vote in the primary. Yet, he was able to increase his percentage by only 8.5%, meaning he only received about half of the votes from his endorsers. Thus, even if Jay were to get the endorsements of both Virginia Blanque and Fred Robertson (who received a combined total of 16.5 % of the primary vote), and assuming he could get 60% of that vote, two assumptions that are very unlikely, he would be left with only 48.5% of the vote, or not enough to win.