Louisiana Redistricting: Not Much New from Baton Rouge
A straightforward status quo update to Louisiana’s congressional map took an anything-but-straightforward path to reality.
With Louisiana retaining its six House districts for another decade, many Democrats had hoped for the creation of a second majority-Black seat to go alongside the current 2nd District; the state is 33 percent Black but just one of six seats (17 percent) is majority Black. . In March, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed the plan passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, which didn’t include another heavily Black seat, on these grounds.
But with the help of a few crossover votes in the state House, the legislature overrode the governor’s veto — the first veto override in Louisiana in three decades — meaning the plan will stand, barring any legal developments.
The result is a largely status-quo map, with each new district retaining, on average, 96 percent of its current configuration’s population, based on calculations from Daily Kos Elections.
Elections in Louisiana are notable for their unique “jungle” primary system, in which all candidates appear on the same Nov. 8 ballot regardless of party, with the top two advancing to a Dec. 10 runoff should none receive a majority. But not even blanket elections can change the extreme partisanship of the state’s six seats.
The median Republican-leaning district in Louisiana would have voted for President Donald Trump by 33.3 points in 2020, according to a composite of all nine statewide and…
