Election results: Clay Higgins wins 3rd Congressional District race in blowout, no runoff

Controversial Congressman Clay Higgins, R-Lafayette, coasted through his third reelection bid Tuesday to win a fourth term representing Southwest Louisiana in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Higgins, whose social media presence has regularly garnered attention since he first won election in 2016, faced a slate of seven challengers, including perhaps the most prominent Republican opponent he has drawn in recent years in Lafayette prosecutor Holden Hoggatt, whose campaigns ads made waves for mocking Higgins' well-known Crime Stoppers videos and targeting his history of domestic issues.

Election Results: See full results from the Nov. 8 primary election in Louisiana here

But Higgins wiped the slate in Tuesday's primary election, securing a fourth term in Congress and avoiding any threat of a December runoff election.

With an unofficial turnout of 44.6% in the nine parishes that span Higgins' district, the congressman secured 64% of votes cast, more than 50 percentage points above any of the other candidates in the race, including Hoggatt, who finished second with 11% of the vote.

Democrats Lessie Leblanc and Tia LeBrun followed with 10% and 9% respectively, while four other candidates combined for just under 5% of the remaining ballots cast.

Tuesday's election saw 223,844 ballots cast in the 3rd Congressional District race covering Southwest Louisiana, with Higgins receiving 144,093 of those votes, while no other candidate managed to crack 25,000, according to preliminary results from the Louisiana Secretary of State.

Editor's note: A previous version of this report miscounted the number of times Higgins has run for office. This marks his fourth election and his third reelection bid. We regret the error.

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This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Final results: Clay Higgins wipes slate in midterm reelection bid