The 2024 United States presidential election in Louisiana was held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, as part of the 2024 United States presidential election, which all 50 states and the District of Columbia participated in. Louisiana voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote. The state of Louisiana has eight electoral votes in the Electoral College. This was following the reapportionment due to the 2020 United States census in which the state neither gained nor lost a seat.
The Republican former President Donald Trump ran for re-election to a second non-consecutive term after his defeat in the 2020 election. Trump defeated the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, in Louisiana by a margin of 22%, an increase of 3.4% compared to 2020.
Primary elections
Republican primary
The Louisiana Republican primary was held on March 23, 2024.
Democratic primary
The Louisiana Democratic primary was held on March 23, 2024, alongside the primary in Missouri.
General election
Electoral slates
The voters of Louisiana cast their ballots for electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, rather than directly for the President and Vice President. Louisiana is allocated eight electors because it has six congressional districts and two senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot must submit a list of eight electors who pledge to vote for their candidate and their running mate. Whoever wins the most votes in the state is awarded all eight electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than their candidate is known as a faithless elector. There are no laws on the books in Louisiana that prohibit or punish faithless electors.
These electors were nominated by each party to vote in the Electoral College should their candidate win the state:
Results
By parish
Parishes that flipped from Democratic to Republican
- St. James (largest city: Lutcher)
- Iberville (largest city: St. Gabriel)
- Tensas (largest city: Newellton)
By congressional district
Trump won four of six congressional districts.
Analysis
As a Deep Southern state located largely within the Bible Belt, Louisiana has a conservative voting pattern, with the only Democrats to carry the state's electoral votes after Franklin D. Roosevelt being Adlai Stevenson II in his first bid, John F. Kennedy, fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter in his first bid, and Bill Clinton of neighboring Arkansas. Republicans have won the state in every presidential election since George W. Bush of neighboring Texas did in 2000, and have done so by double-digit margins since Bush's 2004 re-election. This was the first election since 2008 in which any parish flipped parties.
This was the first presidential election in Louisiana since 1984 when a candidate received over 60% of the statewide vote. Trump became the first Republican to win majority-African American Tensas Parish since George H. W. Bush in 1988, as well as the first since Richard Nixon in 1972 to achieve likewise in the slimly majority-minority parishes of Iberville and St. James.
Although these Black-plurality counties flipped to Trump, ecological inference from precinct analysis indicates while Black voters shifted somewhat to Trump, Trump's voter base remains strongly with White voters.
In Iberville Parish, where Trump gained 2 percentage points since 2020, southern racial polarization is on full display with Black voters still backing Harris at 93% in two way share of vote and White voters backing Trump with 83% of their vote. St. James Parish is similar, where Trump gained nearly 3 percentage points since 2020. Black voters there backed Harris at 92% in two way share of vote, while White voters backed Trump at 84%. Tensas Parish, however differs with Trump receiving a strong 19% of the Black vote here suggesting a notable fall off of Democratic support, while also getting 89% of the White vote. In the large cities of New Orleans, Shreveport and Baton Rouge combined however, Harris received 95% of the Black vote, but was also a slight shift to Trump since 2020.
Voter turnout was also a problem for Democrats with Black voters as there was a 15 point gap, 57% turnout for Black voters and 72% turnout for White voters — measured by the percentage of registered voters who actually cast ballots. White voters were 68% of the statewide electorate despite being 62.6% of the population.