NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 15 -- Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco, a Cajun grandmother and veteran Democrat, won a tightly contested election for Louisiana's governor Saturday, breaking a 130-year lock by white males on the job and snapping a string of Republican gubernatorial victories this fall.

She defeated Republican Bobby Jindal, a brown-skinned 32-year-old son of immigrants from India whose energetic campaign and credentials as a wunderkind technocrat and committed conservative lifted him from obscurity to the cusp of victory in his first race for public office.

With nearly all precincts reporting, Blanco had about 52 percent of about 1.4 million votes cast.

Blanco, 60, has held public office here for 20 years -- but her victory in the governor's race broke from the path of tradition. She is the first woman to be elected governor of a Deep South state, and only the third female governor elected in the old Confederacy (Texas has had two).

Jindal led narrowly in most polls until about 48 hours before Election Day. Then, with little to separate the two conservative candidates ideologically, Blanco closed out the campaign by launching a blistering attack on Jindal's record as Louisiana's deficit-cutting secretary of health and hospitals in the mid-1990s. The attacks helped eliminate what had been Jindal's edge, and analysts said lingering racism might also have undercut him on Election Day.

"It looks like the momentum shifted in the last couple of days," said Democratic state Rep. Mitch Landrieu, the lieutenant governor-elect.

Blanco's victory was a face-saving triumph for the Democrats, who had lost races for governor in California, Kentucky and Mississippi in the past 40 days. Once she takes office, replacing the retiring incumbent Republican, Gov. Mike Foster, Republicans will control 28 of the nation's 50 governorships.