As Sen. Mary Landrieu soldiered through her re-election race this year with sinking poll numbers and the heavy drag of President Barack Obama, the refrain from her strategists and supporters was always the same: Don't count her out. She's a fighter. She will pull it off in the end. But in the hours before a runoff election on Saturday, when the three-term Louisiana Democrat faces Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy, it is hard to find anyone predicting the kind of eleventh hour victory that Landrieu pulled off in 1996 and 2002 -- turning her into a political legend. "Sen. Landrieu has been a fabulous closer," said Joshua Stockley, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. "Two of her three races, she was not supposed to win."
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Sen. Mary Landrieu is in a tight runoff race on Saturday
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African-American voters will be key to her success
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Landrieu's GOP opponent ties her to Obama
That two-pronged strategy isn't so easy this year in a state that @placeholder lost by 17 points.