A survey out of LSU finds 61-percent of Louisiana residents believe the state is heading in the wrong direction.
The Louisiana Survey polled more than one thousand adults in March and April, and less than 30-percent said the state is heading in the right direction.
The 2024 Louisiana Survey
Director of the Louisiana Survey Professor Michael Henderson says these numbers are similar to the last couple of years.
“We often see more folks saying the states heading the wrong direction instead of the right direction. Its been three years in a row where the people say the wrong direction outnumber the people say right direction by about two to one.”
Henderson says this is the second consecutive year that 61-percent of the respondents said the state is heading in the wrong direction…
“People in both parties both under a Democrat administration last year and a Republican administration this year feel pretty sour about the direction of the state.”
Twenty percent of the respondents told the Louisiana survey that crime is the biggest problem in the state, up from 19 percent since last year. But 36 percent of the respondents have confidence that state government can address their concerns.
“We got a little bit of good news here a little bit of a glass half full. Its still relatively low, about a third of Louisiana residents have some confidence in the state government to tackle the problems they are most concerned about but that number has come up.”
Survey summary:
• Sixty-one percent (61%) of Louisiana residents say the state is heading in the wrong direction. This is the third consecutive year in which the share of people saying “wrong direction” outnumbers the share saying “right direction” by at least 30 percentage points.
• Crime tops the list of problems the public is concerned about, with 28% saying it is the most important problem for state government to tackle in 2024, up from 19% last year.
• Although only 36% of Louisiana residents express confidence in the government of Louisiana to address their concerns effectively, this is eight percentage points higher than it was a year ago and 11 percentage points higher than what it was in 2022 when it hit its lowest point in the history of the Louisiana Survey.
• The state index of consumer sentiment is 57.8, an improvement over 53.5 last year and 50.3 in 2022 – a sign that state residents view their financial situations and the economy as a whole less pessimistically than in recent years.
• Most residents of Louisiana give high evaluations to their local neighborhoods as a place to live and to the state’s public colleges and universities. They have less positive views of the state’s coastal protection and restoration efforts, the quality of the environment, the quality of health care, and the quality of the state as a place to live. They evaluate the public K-12 schools in the state, state efforts at economic development, and infrastructure especially negatively.
