There will soon be more registered Republican voters than Democratic voters in Louisiana, a first in the state's history. The Louisiana GOP is roughly 700 voters away from gaining its first plurality of registered voters in the Pelican State.
Why are we just now seeing voters change their party affiliations in a state that's been deep red for several decades?
"There are a couple of reasons why we're seeing more voters switching to Republican," LA Politics publisher Jeremy Alford said. "There's the big kind of wave over two presidential elections involving Donald Trump that really energized folks who were Democrats to switch to Republican."
The other reason, Alford said, was Louisiana switching to closed party primaries for Congressional races.
"In Louisiana, they really had no reason to switch because we had nothing but the open primary, or the jungle primary."
Alford says Republicans overtaking Democrats in voter registration is no surprise. The timing, however, is.
"A lot of folks expected this to happen late last year," Alford said. "The process has been a little slower than Republicans would have liked. Again, a lot of folks expected it to happen last year. But I do think the move to the closed primary for congressional races and other major regional races in Louisiana kind of supercharged that process and moved us a little bit closer."
