Louisiana's State Elections Made the State a Republican Trifecta

Saturday, Oct. 16 the Primary elections of Louisiana were held and State Attorney General Jeff Landry was elected governor of Louisiana. This victory brought an end to the eight years of Louisiana being divided, and now the state is all Republican.

Primary Election

Louisiana uses what is referred to as an open primary system, where any qualified elector may qualify as a candidate, regardless of party, and run for office and all eligible voters may cast a vote in the election, regardless of party affiliation. Some call this system a jungle primary because all candidates for an office run together in one election and the majority vote wins. If there is no majority vote winner in the primary election then the top two candidates go to a run-off election called a general election. This type of system is used in Louisiana for all state, parish, municipal, and congressional offices.

This year 15 candidates were involved in the election, among which Mr.Landry won by 51.56% of the votes followed by Shawn Wilson, a Democrat and the state’s former transportation secretary, who secured 25.9 percent of the vote. None of the other candidates reached double digits. There were 8 republican candidates, 2 Democrat and 5 independent candidates. Mr. Landry will replace Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who was the Governor for 2 terms and now he isn’t eligible to run for a third term.

Amongst the notable actions of Mr. Landry are:

• Battling Mr. Edwards and the Biden administration in court over pandemic vaccine mandates.
• He served as a sheriff’s deputy and two-term lawmaker in the House of Representatives. And Landry spent the last eight years as attorney general where he flexed the power of a political office and his particular style of combative conservatism.
• During the coronavirus pandemic, he challenged vaccine and mask mandates on the local and national level for healthcare workers, students, and federal workers, voicing skepticism even as the vaccines were proven to help stem the spread and toll of the virus.

Louisiana has been a divided state since 2016, the governor was a Democrat while the Republicans dominated the House and the Senate. These three powerful positions if in control of one party can affect the Presidential elections and in general Trifecta states work smoothly in the direction that the parties want without any interruption from the opposition side. Now Louisiana became an all Red state joining the other All Red Southern states making the influence of Democrats in the Southern states less and less.

According to a poll provided by Gary TV poll showed that the victory of Landry was predicted and expected:

Here are some more analytics based on the polls.

First off, we have the candidate recognition results as follows:

The voter preferences in the Primary Elections are as follows:

Here are the potential run-off scenarios:

Below are also the key voter concerns in these elections:

Now What Should We Expect

After the victory in the election, Jeff Landry has begun planning for his government and will start the transition based on what he deems necessary. This can mean that under his governorship there will be a noticeable tilt towards the more conservative and republican ways and politics, by basically appointing the chairs to people who the governor and his party consider worthy.

Landry has been associated with Trump and has supported him through the tears so it is expected to see people who agree with that sort of idea to take the rolls.

Landry has also vowed to work to make all his campaign promises come to life and take shape, such as Fighting crime, more strict laws regarding the influence that the LGBTQ community can have over the children in schools, and so on.

A Huge Victory for GOP

Overall this victory made Louisiana in favor of Republicans for the coming years and also took the chance of turning a red state into a blue state away from Dems. it seems that more conservative faces are receiving more attention and have become more and more popular recently and this will eventually push the government to be a conservative one and isolate the more liberal and democratic states. Still, anyhow the coming year and months are by far one of the most important times in both America's and the history of the world, and choices will determine our future.