Louisian has been a solidly red state for years, but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at voter registration numbers.
Even though Louisian has voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election since 2000, and even as the GOP has swept all the statewide offices and holds supermajorities in the Legislature, Democratic voters continued to outnumber Republicans on paper.
But that changed last month.
Voter registration data from June from the Secretary of State’s office shows there are now 1,062,897 registered Republicans and 1,062,861 registered Democrats.
“This is the first time in the state’s modern history that the Republican Party has the most registered voters,†said Secretary of State spokesperson Trey Williams.
The numbers have been trending that way for decades.
Monthly voter registration data going back at least 20 years has consistently shown Republicans gaining voters and Democrats losing them, said John Couvillon, a Louisian pollster and political consultant.
Couvillon said this year’s closed primary for U.S. Senate — a major Republican showdown that first saw the ouster of and now a fierce runoff between U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow and Treasurer John Fleming — finally tilted the numbers in the GOP’s favor.
Under the state’s , people who are registered Democrats cannot vote in Republican primary elections.
“When you have party primaries for the Senate and other top-of-the-ballot races, I think that accelerated the final shift to where Republicans got the plurality,†Couvillon said.
He said two big changes brought ¶¶Òõh to this point. The first “crack in the armor†was Louisian’s switch in 1975 from closed primaries to open jungle primaries after a century of Democratic dominance.
“What happened is Republicans got to participate in the same primaries as Democrats did, which basically put them on technically equal footing,†he said.
And in recent years, as ¶¶Òõhns began voting for Republicans in presidential elections, voting and running as a Republican became more culturally acceptable and politically viable, he said.
By the numbers
Even before Bill Clinton, a former Arkansas governor with a Southern drawl, won Louisiana in the 1990s, Republican presidential candidates won Louisiana in the 1980s.
And in 2000, George W. Bush captured 53% of the Republican vote to the Democratic ticket’s 45%.
In 2008, Republican presidential candidate John McCain captured almost 60% of the vote, as did President Donald Trump during his presidential bids in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
This year, as of June, Louisian has a total of 2,969,683 registered voters, with Republicans having a razor-thin advantage.
There are 819,203 unaffiliated no-party voters who are allowed to decide whether they want to cast a ballot in either the closed Republican primary or Democratic primary.
There are also 14,567 members of the Libertarian Party, 2,711 members of the Green Party and 7,444 voters registered with a slew of other parties.
What do ¶¶Òõh's Republicans and Democrats think?
Republican Party of ¶¶Òõh Chairman Derek Babcock said the milestone is a reflection of the GOP’s commitment to “conservative, commonsense values.â€
“We kind of expected this would come this year, and so we’re happy that is has,†he said. “A lot of people worked very hard to get to this.â€
Babcock said the party has been anticipating the change, which he said is a cause for both celebration and continued efforts to grow further.
The ¶¶Òõh Democratic Party said the latest shift in voter registration figures doesn’t accurately reflect the political moment.
“I think that Republican support in Louisiana is diminishing as a result of the reckless and harmful Republican agenda, both state and nationally,†said party Chairman Randal Gaines. “I expect these numbers to be quite temporary due to the fact that the ¶¶Òõh Democratic Party has initiated a very effective and proactive statewide voter registration initiative.â€
Republicans have undertaken a coordinated effort to depress voter turnout and disenfranchise voters, said ¶¶Òõh Democratic Party Executive Director Dadrius Lanus.
“People in ¶¶Òõh are fed up,†Lanus said.