East Baton Rouge Parish, LA - Baton Rouge Area Chamber: Biden +14%

It might be completely irrelevant, but accidentally stumbled upon this a few minutes ago:

I was wondering if anyone knows more about the voting pattern in Louisiana especially around urban / suburban areas. I don't know Louisiana at all, but for an area that has a fairly significant city (New Orleans) I am surprised there was no discussion of any swing towards Hillary in 2016 or possible shifts in congressional seats. Are there any of the high-education / high-income suburbs that swung towards Democrats in 2016 or 2018 in Louisiana?

I only ask because it seems that there was discussion about the Little Rock-based seat in Arkansas moving towards Democrats, in Mississippi Espy had a relatively close election thanks in part to swings in the Jackson area, and obviously Georgia, Texas, and even Oklahoma had some pretty impressive results for Democrats.

So what's up in Louisiana? Can someone with more knowledge explain in more detail what happened in 2016 there? And what are the best pathways forward for Democrats? Also what was John Bel Edwards's path to victory and hopefully to re-election?

I thought this might be interesting to take a peek at and look at some precinct level results for the 2012 and 2016 Presidential Elections in Upper-Income parts of Louisiana....

Haven't made it to New Orleans yet, but pulled the data for the three wealthiest places in Metro Baton Rouge....

Now, the caveat here is that Louisiana does not break down early voting by precinct for a given Parish, so there is always a chance that data could be distorted if there were shifts in early voting patterns in these communities.

Wealthiest Places in Metro Baton Rouge:

1.) Prairieville---- MHI- $ 95.8k/ Yr (Ascension Parish)--- Pop 29.7k

47% of 25+ > 4 Year Degree, 46% HS Degree. 78% Anglo, 10% Black, 5% Latino

2012: 2,643 Obama (18.7%) , 11,272 Romney (79.5%) +60.8% R
2016: 2,756 HRC (18.8%), 11,228 Trump (76.7%) +57.9% R

+2.9% D Swing 2012 > 2016

2.) Westminster--- MHI $ 91.3k/Yr (East Baton Rouge Parish)--- Pop 3.1k

68% of 25+ > 4 Year Degree, 32% HS Degree. 73% Anglo, 12% Black, 11% Asian,

2012: 347 Obama (22.1%), 1,186 Romney (75.4%) +53.3% R
2016: 383 HRC (27.8%), 872 Trump (63.2%) +35.4% R

+ 17.9% D Swing 2012 > 2016

3.) Shenandoah--- MHI $ 86.5k /Yr (East Baton Rouge Parish)--- Pop 20.0k

53% of 25+ > 4 Yr Degree, 43% HS Degree. 73% Ango, 13% Black, 5% Asian, 4% Latino

*** Calculating the exact precincts are trickier because of the GiS mapping app, but I'm including precincts 3-3 A/B, 3-15 A/B, 3-38 A/B, 3-41 A/B, 3-43 A/B, 3-53 A/B ***

2012: 1,213 Obama (19.0%), 5,059 Romney (79.3%) + 60.3% R
2016: 1,403 HRC (23.5%), 4,201 Trump (70.5%) +47.0% R

+ 13.3% D Swing

So what does all of this tell us?

1.) There was minimal shifts in the fast growing exurban Baton Rouge Community of Prairieville between 2012 and 2016. HRC did not gain any increase in % over Obama 2012, and the marginal shifts in Republican vote margins were a result of voters shifting to 3rd Party Candidates.

Although the Democrats gained an additional 113 Votes between '12/'16 and the 'Pubs lost 44 Votes, the overall election day voter pool expanded by 463 Votes.

2.) There was a significant swing in the relatively small and highly educated community of Westminster between '12 and '16, although a good chunk of this came from a relatively high 3rd Party Voting % for an educated and affluent community (9.0% Others)...

Overall in addition to 3rd Party Candidates total election day votes dropped between '12 and '16, which in addition to the 3rd Party Votes accounted for a significant chunk of the '12 > '16 margin swing.

In terms of occupations there is an extremely high % of workers within Westminster in occupations such as Management / Business / Computers,Science & Math / Engineering.

3.) Shenandoah is a cross between Westminster & Prairieville in terms of Ethnic Demographics and Educational attainment, but did experience visible swings between '12 and '16 election day support for the Democratic Presidential candidate.

It does have a significantly higher % of the population working in the Manufacturing Industry (11.9%) and lower % in "Professional" Occupations.

There was a +200 increase in Dem votes between '12 and '16 and a drop of 800 'Pub votes in that same time range. Total election day votes dropped 420 between that time....

4.) So here's where it gets tricky.... without knowing EV /ED combined votes by precinct we don't really know the exact swings in these places.

Shenandoah and Prairieville both have significantly larger Black Populations than many other educated, suburban/exurban Metro areas in parts of the Country outside of the South, so to what extent if any were there variations in EV/ED votes by Ethnicity, since it appears odd that total votes would decrease between '12 and '16 in highly educated upper middle-class communities....

5.) Metro Baton Rouge is interesting, and was the key example of one of the breakdowns Chinni and Gimpel made in their book "Our Patchwork Nation", which they used to dissect the results of the 2008 Presidential Election, as representative of the category they called "Minority Central".

https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2010/1027/Our-Patchwork-Nation

http://www.patchworknation.org/Minority-Central

6.) Obviously any extensive dissection of the 2016 Presidential Election results in Louisiana, should also look at the return of the "Katrina Refugees", including LA residents from a wide variety of backgrounds, and between '12 and '16 there was a huge number of these residents returning, especially from places like Metro Houson, DFW, etc....

Anyways--- hopefully this adds to a starting discussion to swings among Educated / Upper Middle-Class voters in Louisiana between the 2012 and 2016 Presidential Elections....

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