BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — Sonya Knox had cast her ballot. Now, she was going home to get her 18-year-old grandson.
She had just learned he was registered to vote. At 65, she wasn’t about to let the young Black man sit out an election when she feared the rights that made her own vote possible were being taken away.
“They trying to take all our voting rights from us,” Knox said. “So that’s why I get out. I walk out and make sure I vote.”
Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court dismantled Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district, which included Knox’s home. It has left Black voters with fewer opportunities to elect a representative of their choice.
But on Election Day, voters like Knox were determined not to surrender the power they still had.
She feared Black people were being pushed backward in a spiraling way. “They trying to put us back in slavery, baby,” Knox said. “You don’t know this?”
Knox joined more than 180,000 Black Louisianians who had already voted early or by absentee ballot. Black voters accounted for nearly 35% of the state’s electorate, exceeding their 31% share of the state’s registered voters, according to a Capital B analysis. So during the early voting period, Black voters flexed their political power at a higher rate than expected leading to Election Day.
The Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais struck down the state’s 2024 congressional map, finding that the state had engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering when it created a second majority-Black district.
The decision also narrowed the circumstances in which voters can challenge redistricting plans for racial vote dilution nationwide. It changed the legal standards available to people seeking to challenge maps across the country.
Those consequences have become part of the explanation political leaders and analysts offer for this year’s Black voter participation.
“I think a lot of people feel that the Black voters in Louisiana feel under attack. When people feel under attack, that’s when they get more involved in the political process,” said Robert Collins, a political analyst at the New Orleans-based HBCU Dillard University.
Across 12 of the 17 parishes that saw their congressional district changed because of the Supreme Court ruling, Black voters showed up at a higher rate than their share of the general population, according to a Capital B analysis.
In the parishes that were involved in redistricting, Black voters accounted for roughly 36% of participants, compared with about 33% in parishes that were not involved in the ruling, our analysis found.
Now, their participation is testing how much political power they can exercise under a map that leaves them with fewer opportunities to elect a representative of their choice.
There were nearly 145,000 more ballots cast during early voting this year than during the last midterm election in 2022.
In Baton Rouge, Mark Harris, 29, had a question for anyone who believed casting a ballot was pointless.
“If it didn’t count, why are the people that’s in power trying to stop us from voting?” he asked.
Harris said the changes to his congressional district were part of what brought him out. He saw voting as both an obligation to the people who had fought for his rights and an answer to those trying to diminish Black political power.
“The best thing we can do to show them that we’re not scared is to show up,” he said.
Across the state in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, a steady stream of Black voters cast ballots at Blessed Seelos Church. Among them was Arlet Wylie, a 39-year-old New Orleans native voting in her first midterm election.
“You don’t realize how these votes impact you more than any other ones, and then you start seeing harmful stuff happening in the city and state,” she said after casting her ballot. “You start to wonder, ‘How did that happen or how did that pass?’ It’s because of elections like this.”
U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, whose district was redrawn into a majority-white, Republican-leaning seat, believes outrage over the ruling is helping bring Black voters to the polls.
“I often say to people: ‘Don’t make this make you vote less. Make this make you vote more. Now is the time you stand up,’” Fields told the Louisiana Illuminator.
For Unika Boatner, 46, the fight over representation was inseparable from the opportunities available to her children. She described an economy that she said is “so one-way and one-sided” toward the white and wealthy.
Like Knox, Boatner was trying to bring the next generation to the polls. Her 22-year-old son works at Amazon but didn’t want to vote. She was pushing him to reconsider.
“I’m saying this is your rights and they’re targeting us because we’re Black and living in poverty,” she said. More than 40% of people in her 90% Black community live in poverty.
That participation could also bolster Democrat Jamie Davis, a Black farmer and former Tensas Parish police juror running to become Louisiana’s first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.
This is the state’s highest turnout of early voters among Black residents since the 2008 election that saw President Barack Obama become America’s first African American president.
“It’s personal for me,” said Wylie, who grew up in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “You hear a lot of Black people saying, ‘It doesn’t matter and voting doesn’t matter,’ and I feel like I understand that to a certain extent. But the fact that more people are voting, especially in this kind of election, that’s great.”
In East Baton Rouge Parish, home to Fields, Black voters accounted for nearly half of early participants. In Caddo Parish, at the other end of the former district’s reach, they represented 47.5%. And in St. Landry Parish, another community included in the former district, Black voters made up a majority of the early electorate.
Turnout for Democrats is also exceeding expectations.
This year, for the first time in Louisiana history, the state saw more registered Republican voters than Democrats. But during early voting, Democrats made up 42.5% of the vote, compared to Republicans at 39%. This jump was largely due to strong Black turnout in New Orleans, the state’s largest city.
In the redrawn parishes, Democrats held a smaller advantage: 42% to 40%. This is because a lower share of Black residents in these areas are registered as Democrats than in the rest of the state.
For other voters, the motivation was less about the details of redistricting than what their children stood to inherit.
Thedric Haney, 37, said he votes in every election, but he was especially motivated this election out of concern for his children’s future in a world he wanted to change.
“I think it’s important to vote because I have, like, kids coming up, and this voting dictates their future,” he said.
Unlike House contests, Davis’ statewide race against Republican U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow cannot be reshaped by the Supreme Court case. Strong Black participation, better-than-expected fundraising, and a favorable national environment for Democrats because of dwindling support for President Donald Trump have made the contest more competitive than anticipated, according to political analysts. However, Letlow remains the favorite because Republicans in the state tend to vote on Election Day.
According to pollsters, Davis needs to receive at least 90% of the Black vote to win on Nov. 3, while collecting about 30% of the white vote.
This story has been updated.
