NEW ORLEANS – The U.S. Supreme Court erased Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district, but it did not erase Black voters’ determination to cast a ballot.
There was a steady stream of Black voters casting votes at New Orleans’ Blessed Seelos Church in the city’s Ninth Ward on Election Day.
They joined the more than 180,000 Black Louisianians who had already voted early or by absentee ballot during the state’s early voting period.
Black voters accounted for nearly 35% of the early electorate. In comparison, Black people make up 31% of the state’s registered voters. So during the early voting period, Black voters flexed their political power at a higher rate than expected leading to Election Day.
This was the first midterm election that 39-year-old New Orleans native Arlet Wylie had voted in.
“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.”
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.
There were nearly 145,000 more ballots cast during early voting this year than during the last midterm election in 2022.
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.
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.
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.
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.
