Why Louisiana's voter rolls may get redder this year
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Louisiana is poised to have more registered Republicans than Democrats on its voter rolls for the first time ever.
Why it matters: It's a statistical shift that would bring what the state looks like on paper more in line with how it's functioned in real life for decades.
The intrigue: A few Louisiana elections this year will have newly closed party primaries, meaning only registered Republicans and self-selected unaffiliated voters will be able to choose between Republican candidates in their primaries. Same for Democrats.
- But despite voting reliably Republican for much of its recent history, Louisiana still has a plurality of registered Democratic voters.
Yes, but: A Senate race between President Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and incumbent Bill Cassidy, which will have a closed party primary, may help nudge Louisiana across that line.
- "Once the campaign season [is] underway, I could see communications like, 'Oh, you better register Republican if you want to vote in the primary,'" says pollster John Couvillon.
Catch up quick: The South was solidly Democratic for most of American history.
- In the 1960s and early 1970s, civil rights issues and President Nixon's "Southern strategy" changed that, according to Dillard University urban studies and public policy professor Robert Collins.
- The goal, Collins previously told Axios New Orleans, was to "flip a lot of Southern Democrats … over to the Republican Party, and it worked. Not all at once, but it worked."
State of play: Today's voter rolls reflect how long that process has taken — and how annoying it is to change voter registration.
- Under Louisiana's jungle primary system, however, in which a member of any party can vote for any candidate, voter registration didn't especially matter.
- That changes in a closed party system. Check your voter registration.
The state already "crossed the Rubicon" by tallying more active Republican voters than Democrats last summer, Couvillon notes, but it should only take a matter of months this year before Louisiana's total roster of registered voters is plurality-GOP.
What they're saying: The shift "might push people who were registered as a Democrat in the 1970s or 1980s, and maybe the 1990s, and who never migrated over or never saw it as a big deal" to re-register, says Bob Mann, a retired LSU professor who worked as a press secretary on multiple Democratic campaigns.
- "Now, it becomes a big deal."
- If a voter, for example, is registered as a Democrat but wants to cast a ballot in the Letlow v. Cassidy primary, they won't be able to unless they change their registration ahead of the May 16 party primary.
What we're watching: Confusion over the system, which only affects five elections, may slow Louisiana's transition from Democrat to Republican.
- "After that (May 16) primary, you may see a lot of people go 'Oh, wait a minute, I need to go change my registration,'" Mann says. "It might be that the confusion that comes out of this election prompts people to take that step."