At the 11th hour, the Louisiana Legislature agreed to the Congressional reapportionment plan (with amendments) of Representative Erich Ponti (R-Baton Rouge). We have analyzed the changes and have the following obervations/comments:

(1)    The Congressional statistics include the Ponti bill with approved amendments from Sen. Danny Martiny (R-Kenner) and Sen. Neil Riser (R-Columbia);

(2)    The political data “before” and “after” only includes the early vote in cases where a parish was not split between Congressional districts – we can not easily allocate this vote between each congressional district, because in Louisiana, early votes are aggregated at the parish (and not the precinct) level;

(3)    District 3 figures before reapportionment were actually those of District 7 – 76% of the redrawn District 3 contains territory from the old District 7;

(4) In five of the districts (Steve Scalise, Cedric Richmond, John Fleming, Rodney Alexander, and Jeff Landry/Charles Bountany) the political leanings are virtually unchanged. Bill Cassidy’s district is now more securely conservative: the black voter registration dropped from 32 to 20%, and both David Vitter and Jay Dardenne saw their percentages in the district increase 6 percent.

We will display the maps in a subsequent posting.