A series on trends in voter registration
In early August, the New York Times revealed that since 2005, there has been a major shift in party registration, with the Republicans losing ground to Democrats and to unaffiliated voters. But what caused these shifts? How large have they been in key (and not so key) states? Have there been any demographic shifts? How will they help (or hinder) the Democratic party's chances at victory this November?
The answer can be found below.
Louisiana is one of the 3 states (along with Florida and North Carolina) which both registers voters by party and collects racial data as part of compliance with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
While the combination of Hurricane Katrina and the still-existing legacy of Democratic dominance of the state make it tough to read too much into these numbers, we can still glean something from them.
Louisiana is the second most heavily African-American state in the country (after Mississippi, which unfortunately does not have available registration data).
Though Barack Obama will not win in Louisiana, his candidacy has galvanized new African-American registration, which will help Senator Mary Landrieu and Representative Don Cazayoux get re-elected while helping Paul Carmouche and Don Cravins pick up seats in Northeast Louisiana and southwest Louisiana. Should they all win, we will have a 5-2 margin in the Louisiana Congressional delegation.
As you can see, there's been a major recent increase in African-American registration this year.
After increasing their share of registered voters only 1% in the 9 years between 1998 and 2007, it's risen another half a percent in just 8 months.
Between February and July (the time between purges), African-American registration went up by 28,000 voters. Only 13,000 new white voters registered during that time period.
The gain is particularly significant given that Louisiana's black population took a significant hit as a result of Hurricane Katrina, dropping from 32.5% to 31.7% of the population between 2000 and 2006 (it has probably crept up again somewhat, as in 2000, only 29.7% of those over 18 were black, while 40% of those under 18 were black).
And of course, Senator Obama has already and likely will result in a more than typical African-American turnout this November.
Between 1998 and 2007, only 2 times did blacks turn out in proportionately greater numbers than indicated by their registration.
But for the presidential primary in 2008, black turnout significantly exceeded the black percentage of registered voters. Granted, the turnout was low and the Democratic side was more competitive, and yet the percentage of white Democrats (21%) voting was smaller than the percentage of white Republicans (23.8%) voting.
Both, of course, were dwarfed by the 32.5% turnout among African-American Democrats (88.9% of African-Americans registered in Louisiana at the time were registered Democrats; 3.6% were registered Republicans).
However, should black turnout even be proportional to black registration, it will make many Democrats lives a lot easier.
After all, the diaper-loving junior Senator from the state of Louisiana just barely avoided a runoff with Chris John in 2004, obtaining 51% of the vote. had black turnout been proportional to black registration, he would have been forced into a runoff and might well have been defeated, in which case we'd never have found out about Vitter's prostitute-loving sexcapades, but we'd have 2 Democratic Senators from Louisiana shilling for the oil industry (and voting for cloture on most non-oil bills) rather just one.
More importantly, it was the fact that blacks made up a larger proportion of voters in the runoff (27.1%) than in the primary (25.9%) that helped Mary Landrieu beat Suzanne Terrell and get re-elected to the United States Senate.
I believe Louisiana law has changed regarding federal offices, eliminating the open primary/runoff, but it'll make it far easier for Mary to beat confused John Kennedy(He doesn't know-LA).
At the Congressional level, it's also making election and re-election significantly easier.
While all districts have had decent gains recently, the largest gain has been in Louisiana's 6th district. That's largely because many displaced blacks from New Orleans now reside there in the Louisiana capital, Baton Rouge.
Along with several other factors, this helped allow Don Cazayoux to defeat David Duke acquaintance Woody Jenkins in the special election to succeed resigning-to-K Street Republican Richard Baker, putting a non-John Birch-Democrat in that seat for the first time in over 40 years
However, due in part to egotistical African-American State Representative Michael Jackson, black turnout was low (24.8% of voters compared to 30.7% of those registered) in that election, and Obama-induced increased black turnout may not be enough to counteract African-Americans voting for St. Rep. Jackson.
That's not something that we will have to worry about in Louisiana's 7th district, where Don Cravins seeks to win back Chris John's old seat and become the first African-American to get elected to a non-Voting Rights Act-gerrymandered
Congressional district from the South.
In the 2004 runoff, 23.3% of registered voters in LA-7 were African-American, but African-Americans made up only 18.3% of those turning out to vote.
While a higher turnout would not have been enough to send Willie Mount to Congress, it would have made the race a lot closer.
This year, with 2 history-making candidates, one expects African-American turnout to be high.
Party Registration
Louisiana, along with Kentucky and West Virginia and to some extent, North Carolina, is one of only 4 states to defy the nationwide trend of Republican decline and Democratic gain in party registration.
However, there's a good reason for that.
The reason is that, as a result of the until-quite recent Democratic lock on the state, even today, Democrats make up an absolute majority of registered voters, and are a plurality of registered voters even in the overwhelmingly Republican David Duke-electing (to state legislature) 1st district (if only just barely).
In fact, whites are still 70,000 more registered white Democrats than registered black Democrats (down from a 350,000 gap 10 years ago).
While the Democratic decline has leveled off over the last few months, this is due only to the overwhelming increase in African-American registered voters; the number of white Democrats continues to decline.
However, even so, a huge Democratic over-registration remains.
Senator Obama will probably (but not definitely) get a majority of white Democrats in Louisiana to support him, but he has almost no chance of getting even 2/3 of them to support him.
Still, again, Louisiana is out of sync with the rest of America and even with the 2 other Southern states registering voters by party.