What happened in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana in 2012?

[krb08]

Why did St. Bernard Parish swing 21 points to the left in 2012? It went from McCain +45 to Romney +24. At first, I thought it might be because the parish's Black population who moved away post-Katrina moved back in. But the total number of votes only increased by about 400, from 13,541 to 13,955. So what happened?

[Sailor Haumea]

Why did St. Bernard Parish swing 21 points to the left in 2012? It went from McCain +45 to Romney +24. At first, I thought it might be because the parish's Black population who moved away post-Katrina moved back in. But the total number of votes only increased by about 400, from 13,541 to 13,955. So what happened?

It's suburbanizing pretty fast.

[krb08]

Why did St. Bernard Parish swing 21 points to the left in 2012? It went from McCain +45 to Romney +24. At first, I thought it might be because the parish's Black population who moved away post-Katrina moved back in. But the total number of votes only increased by about 400, from 13,541 to 13,955. So what happened?

It's suburbanizing pretty fast.

That might explain some of it, but 2012 wasn't a year where most suburbs shifted rapidly left. Most were pretty stable or shifted a couple points right from 2008.

[DINGO Joe]

St. Bernard was a WWC suburbanized/rural fishing Parish before Katrina that thanks to a old time political boss--Leander Perez was extremely white (more than 90%) despite being adjacent to some of the blackest parts of New Orleans.  Katrina had the greatest impact on this Parish as the total votes fell from 30,000 in 2004 to 13,000 in 2008 with many of those voters voting from a location outside of St. Bernard.  Ultimately many white relocated to the Northshore and the vacuum and modern laws led to an influx of minorities into the Parish for the first time,

Louisiana provides very precise demographic information on who votes in each election and in the case of St, Bernard, the number of blacks casting votes increased by 900 in 2012 while the number of whites declined by 600 (others rose by 100)  Obama's vote total rose by 1500 while Romney's decline by 1100 meaning about 500 whites switched from McCain to Obama, which would be 5% of white voters.  That doesn't sound like much of a swing but for Louisiana and the South in general it was quite large, probably even greater than the white swing Obama got in New Orleans.  Why? Beats me, possibly related to Mitt's lack of WWC appeal, but overall it must be noted that 2/3rd of the swing was merely a function of shifting demographics post-Katrina.