Dissatisfaction with Democrats in Washington, D.C., runs so deep in Louisiana that locals are saying: "We got to take the bitter with Vitter."

Despite fielding a strong candidate in Rep. Charlie Melancon, whose public profile rose considerably after the BP PLC oil spill this summer, Democrats have not seen their fortunes rise in the Louisiana Senate race. Voters appear willing to overlook Republican Sen. David Vitter's possible transgressions rather than send another Democrat to Capitol Hill.

"Voters see the Senate elections as a team sport," said pollster Scott Rasmussen. Voters are saying, "Even if I don't think of Senator Vitter as the ideal person to represent me, I want to send another Republican to the Senate rather than send someone to Harry Reid and his team," Rasmussen said.

Melancon, a conservative Blue Dog Democrat, has trailed the Republican among likely voters by double digits in most recent polls. Even a poll conducted Sept. 13-16 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and released yesterday showed Vitter with a 9-point lead. The poll of 800 likely voters, taken by Bennett, Petts & Normington, had a 3.5-point margin of error.

And while Melancon saw his statewide profile rise during the crisis over the BP spill, the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has effectively put a cap on his popularity -- despite the fact that Melancon opposes the decision.

Adding to the Democrat's misery, Vitter has successfully branded Melancon as an Obama Democrat, and Democrats have not found a negative issue to hit Vitter with that tracks well with voters.

The fact that Vitter has been tangentially connected to the D.C. Madam prostitution scandal and that a Vitter aide was recently fired after multiple brushes with the law, do not seem to have dramatically hurt his standing in the polls.

In some people's minds, the race for the Senate has underscored the rift between black and white voters in Louisiana, as whites there increasingly identify themselves as anti-Obama, anti-Democratic Republicans.

"Normally you would say with Vitter's problems, you would have thought he would be having a tougher time," said Bernie Pinsonat, pollster with Southern Media & Opinion Research and an expert on Louisiana politics. "This election is not about David Vitter, it is white Democrats and white Republicans voting, showing displeasure with Obama policies and Democrats in general."

The oil spill

Despite a very vocal role as an advocate for Louisiana after the BP oil spill in April, Melancon does not appear to have derived much benefit from the crisis.

Before the spill, the Democrat was little known outside of his 3rd District, which takes in the Cajun country of southeast Louisiana. In a state where oil and gas interests figure prominently, Melancon's district is the epicenter.

The spill was initially a political boon to Melancon, said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "He got more attention statewide, which he needed at the time," she said.

Melancon was front and center demanding that the oil giant be accountable and pay reparations to those individuals and businesses affected by the spill. The congressman launched an online petition, which received 8,338 signatures, demanding that BP "pink slip" its CEO, Tony Hayward.

Meanwhile, in the Republican response to the president's weekly radio address at the end of May, Vitter pushed for the establishment of a liability cap equal to the responsible party's last year of profits.

The administration's six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf has backfired on Melancon, despite the three-term Democrat's personal opposition to it, said John Maginnis, a syndicated columnist who runs the political website LaPolitics.com.

"The moratorium is seen as a real threat to the Louisiana economy, imposed by Washington and is more to Vitter's advantage," Maginnis said, even though both candidates have been fighting the ban.

Getting the moratorium lifted might give Melancon a chance of winning, Duffy said. "He is actually working really hard to have it lifted and it would be helpful to him if he could get it lifted before November 2, but I don't think he is going to succeed -- at least it doesn't look like it from here," she said.

Despite the president pushing BP to set up a $20 billion fund to assist those affected by the spill, Obama's handling of the disaster has only diminished his popularity in Louisiana.

The president's poll numbers were "bad before the spill," said Tom Jensen, the director of Public Policy Polling. "Voters in the state thought he did a bad job and they felt that George W. Bush handled Katrina better than Obama handled the spill."

Political realities

Higher approval ratings for Bush, less than two years after one of the best national Democratic showings in decades, reflect Louisianans' shift into an increasingly Republican electorate. Duffy points to the 2007 landslide election of Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. Mary Landrieu's tough re-election fight in 2008 and Obama's weak showing as the telltale signs.

Obama took 40 percent of the vote in the Pelican State against Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) in 2008, and his approval ratings are at record lows, according to multiple polls. Jensen said that Louisiana is one of the president's worst states in the country, with 35 percent of voters approving of his performance and 61 percent disapproving.

Looking deeper into those numbers, Jensen said Republicans are unanimous and now independents are nearly unanimous in their disapproval.

Pinsonat said that even among Louisiana Democrats, the trend is to vote Republican. In an early August survey, Southern Media and Opinion Research Inc. found that regardless of how they were registered, 51 percent of likely voters agreed more often with the Republicans than Democrats and that 46 percent of those queried, who did not identify themselves as Republicans, said they would vote for Vitter in the Senate race.

To win, Melancon must get African American voters to the polls; however, Duffy said the sheer number of African American votes might just not be there anymore after Hurricane Katrina. African American voters represented 29 percent of the electorate in the 2008 elections.

Rasmussen said in a recent poll he found that, "Barack Obama receives an 18 percent job approval rating from white voters and 99 percent from African American voters in Louisiana." He called that a fairly typical split among Democratic and Republican voters.

But for David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the issue is clearly about race.

"It's a whole cultural thing," he said. "Obama is the first northern Democrat [in the White House] since [John F.] Kennedy. He definitely represents values and a kind of politics which southerners have been getting used to."

Knowing Vitter better

For Louisianans, re-electing Vitter is sending a known entity back to Washington.

Even as he has been the punch line for jokes about congressional bad behavior, Vitter's support in Louisiana has remained high even after it was disclosed that his name appeared in the phone records of the D.C. Madam.

This election marks the first for Vitter since he confessed to an unspecified "serious sin" in 2007 and since news broke that one of Vitter's aides had a series of run-ins with the law, including an incident in 2008 where he allegedly attacked his girlfriend with a knife.

Democrats sought to highlight Vitter's possible connection with the prostitution ring by creating a website, Forgotten Crimes, and documentary-style video, "Forgotten Crimes: Lawmaker, Lawbreaker," about the alleged encounter.

More recently, Democrats have highlighted Vitter's statements about extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the "very wealthy" after the first-term senator told a room full of Louisianans that they were among the very wealthy.

But despite a full-scale Democratic media blitz, not much has changed and Republicans are crowing about their potential victory.

"It's no surprise that Senator Vitter continues to hold a commanding double-digit lead," said Chris Bond, a spokesman at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Melancon eagerly rubberstamped President Obama and Nancy Pelosi's reckless spending and out-of-control debt in Washington, a liberal agenda that Louisianians continue to overwhelmingly reject."

The Cook Report's Duffy said, "Vitter is underestimated as a campaigner. He runs very good campaigns and spends a lot of time connecting with voters."

And at the end of the day, Maginnis said, "it takes more than one sex scandal to bring down a Louisiana politician."