Louisiana Democrats will find themselves in an even deeper hole if national trends rippling down to the state and parish level continue apace.
Late last year, the U.S. Census Bureau released state population estimates. Earlier this month, it released county population estimates. For Louisiana, in an absolute sense it was mixed bag, but in a relative sense overall positive.
The state gained population to have the most since 2021, at a slower rate than most other states, but the first half-year of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s tenure certainly improved over the eight years of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards when the state lost over 100,00 folks, tempered by the fact that there was a net loss of U.S. citizens but that was offset by more non-citizens in residence, whether legally.
But the data also included that some Louisiana parishes took a big hit in number of residents. Morehouse was in the top ten decliners of all counties with at least 20,000 people, and Caddo and Orleans landed the same for those counties with at least 100,000. East Baton Rouge and Jefferson, like the state as a whole, reversed – barely – years of losing people, while the other two largest parishes in the state, Lafayette and St. Tammany, showed healthy gains.
These results at the top end of population were a microcosm of a larger trend: reviewing the top and bottom ten in population percentage change year-over-year, parishes regardless of region with (undivided where applicable) Republican governance were the biggest winners – and where Landry in 2023 received no less than 49 percent of the vote and as many as 30 points higher – while the biggest losers all came from north Louisiana but mixed among Republican-led and Democrat-led. The same dynamic held for the most part for population change since the 2020 census where only nine parishes (a few overlapping for 2023-24 change, including Lafayette and St. Tammany) gained population and among them just West Baton Rouge didn’t have Republicans unambiguously in charge (with Landry receiving at least just over half of the vote in all); meanwhile, among the biggest losers, which included Democrat-run Caddo and Orleans, only two had GOP governance.
That replicates national results, where two of the biggest winners were the two most populous GOP-controlled states, Texas and Florida, and three of the biggest losers were three of the most populous Democrat-controlled states, California, New York, and Illinois. This has not gone unnoticed among the more astute on the political left, who bemoan the fact that this could produce as much as a 20-seat swing towards Republicans in the House of Representatives beginning in 2032, and with the related Electoral College spillover threatening to create semi-permanent Republican majorities in the House and White House.
The same holds true in Louisiana. As Democrat strongholds lose people while Republican ones gain them, this means for future reapportionment Democrats – who already seem to have collapsed into an inability to win any single executive statewide offices and function in permanent minorities on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Public Service Commission, and Supreme Court – also may find themselves in a permanent superminority status within both legislative chambers as the trend makes it easier for the majority to draw lines to its electoral advantage.
To reverse this, they can’t pin their hopes on a favorable decision in Nairne v. Landry, which seeks to make race the predominant criterions in reapportionment of state legislative chambers that would force bodies to have the proportion of majority-minority seats within a chamber roughly reflect that proportion in the population, where Democrats historically have taken advantage of black voter fealty to them, as that likely isn’t forthcoming. Instead, state Democrats will need to abandon their far left agenda that seems mainstream only in academia and the legacy media but is widely rejected across most of the remainder of the country in order to attract more voters.
This policy shift could help them in two ways, because not only would the party become more appealing to the median voter but, if implemented in local governments where Democrats now rule, would become less repellent to voters who end up casting ballots with their feet. But, given the echo chamber in which Democrat elites exist, don’t count on this happening anytime soon. For them electorally, it may have to become worse before triggering a catharsis and the chance for eventual improvement.
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