Low stimulus crucial to LA amendments' defeat

It’s time to settle the debate that has arisen about results concerning recent statewide constitutional amendments that failed, and we begin by reviewing a major contributing factor to their defeat by nearly 2:1.

On paper, the most persuasive interpretation would be the results mainly are an artifact of structural turnout patterns. For decades, as the major political parties have become increasingly ideologically pure and polarized, the effect first observed half a century ago of the top-bottom nature of Democrats – support shaped like a barbell wider at the top of the socioeconomic scale, thinner in the middle, and again expanded at the bottom – and the toy top nature of Republican support – thinner at the top and bottom of SES, thick in the middle – has given way to a more defined inversion of the class system insofar as political parties go.

Increasingly, this reordering where now support for Democrats resembles more an inverted pyramid and Republican identifiers shape into a standard wine bottle has implications for election turnout. In the middle of the 20^th century observers believed higher-turnout elections favored Democrats, since less-reliable voters disproportionately had lower SES characteristics who in turn disproportionately voted for Democrats, but as the inversion began to accelerate (because of the emergence of the affluent society after World War II that brought a different issue mix in elections to the fore) that tendency disappeared.

Now, in fact, observers on both the political right and left more and more judge higher-turnout elections generally as favoring Republicans. Translated to Louisiana, that means Republicans will find their greatest success when there is a presidential election at stake, followed by U.S. Senate races (including runoffs), gubernatorial contests on the ballot (including runoffs), the every-dozen-year cycle of just U.S. House seats up for grabs when voters statewide head to the polls and/or other statewide office contests, and finally constitutional amendments only.

A review of election turnout data from 1998 verifies this. Presidential elections averaged over 67 percent turnout, while Senate and gubernatorial contests whether runoffs clustered in the 43-47 percent range, the pair of statewide and/or House-only contests had a mean of almost 38 percent, and amendments only averaged just under 20 percent.

Along with this was significant differences in turnout by registered partisanship. For presidential elections, Republicans on average beat turnout among Democrats by over 8 percent; for Senate contests the GOP advantage was just over 6 and just under 5; for gubernatorial races, it was over 3 and over 1 percent; for House/other statewide it was about 3.5 percent, and for amendments only it was over 2 percent. As further confirmation that the GOP base is becoming more dependent upon stimulation by national elections for turnout, in 20^th century presidential elections without Pres. Donald Trump as a candidate the mean Republican turnout advantage in Louisiana was just under 5.5 percent, but with him as a candidate it has shot up to over 8.5 percent despite him winning these by around 20 percent typically.

More complex statistical calculations confirm the significant role that kind of contest plays in differential partisan turnout in Louisiana. Using a technique known as simple regression that computes covariance between overall turnout and partisan turnout gap, about 30 percent of the partisan turnout gap over the 33 20^th century elections studied is attributed to overall turnout fluctuations. In other words, the higher the turnout, the greater the raw number of Republicans are voting relative to Democrats, or that higher turnouts favor GOP candidates and causes.

Unquestionably, having only amendments on the Mar. 29 ballot and the absence of structural electoral stimulus hurt the chances of the amendments – all approved by the legislature mostly along partisan lines – seen as GOP products from their passing. As well, this was the first set of amendments since 1989 that didn’t come up in the fall. The significance of that is, even in those subsequent years when amendments were rolled out without other national or state executive races attached, they occurred along with local school board or parish office or local judicial-related contests in every parish, which stimulate turnout. But this set of amendments came out during the spring municipal slot, an election date most municipalities don’t employ instead preferring fall elections, thus removing that additional boost to turnout across much of the state.

So, Mar. 29, 2025 was the worst possible time to put up amendments if they were perceived – or made to be perceived – as a partisan product where the party favoring these benefited from high turnout, and it hurt their chances significantly for passage. Of course, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and GOP legislators wanted the changes on the books in time for fiscal year 2026 budgeting as well as generally overall aiding the state, and there’s something to be said for striking while the was hot after Landry’s commanding 2023 gubernatorial victory, especially when the next realistic date for these would have been the fall, 2026 cycle.

But it’s possible that other causes related to current political trends hampered passage, and in fact if not present possibly could have allowed amendment passage despite the unfavorable timing. To these this space will turn to studying in the near future.