Most of the results on the Louisiana ballot this year came as no surprise.   

President-elect Donald Trump won 60.2% of the popular vote, up from 58.5% in his 2020 run.  

Orleans Parish, however, secured 82% of the vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, a 1% drop from the 2020 race vote for President Joe Biden. 

“Statewide, we’re certainly becoming much more Republican,” Rosalind Cook, professor of political science at Tulane University, said.  

Democratic incumbent Rep. Troy Carter kept his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives with 60.3% of the vote in the 2nd District. Incumbent Republican and Majority Leader Steve Scalise of the 1st District also kept his seat with 66.8% of the vote.  

Cook usually teaches her classes about the incumbency advantage, meaning those currently occupying a seat are likely to keep that seat in the election. However, there is a worldwide trend reversing this effect, which may partially explain Harris’ loss as the de facto incumbent candidate.  

“Incumbency is not what it used to be,” she said. 

There were no Senate races in the state this cycle. 

More notably, a new amendment was passed to add to the Louisiana Constitution; federal money that the state receives from energy production on the Outer Continental Shelf will be added to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund. This ballot measure passed with 73% of the vote. 

The majority of every single parish in the state voted in favor of this amendment.   

Cook believes the phenomenon is based on a general lack of information regarding the amendment and the popularity of coastal restoration.   

“I think less information was better. People decided just to go ahead and vote,” she said. 

The city of New Orleans also had its own ballot measures. 

A housing trust to support affordable housing won 75% of the vote. Now, 2% of the City of New Orleans’ general fund will be set aside for this trust. 

Senior Amalie Getz, a California native, registered to vote in Louisiana for the first time for the 2024 election. In preparation, she took five pages of notes to understand each candidate and measure on her ballot. 

Getz voted in support of the housing fund.  

“There’s a huge homelessness crisis. I’m also a public health major, and we talk about that in a lot of my classes,” she said.  

However, the Bureau of Governmental Research came out against the measure in a 36-page report due to the rigidity of the budget.  

“It would unnecessarily limit the City’s budget flexibility as it confronts substantial new costs for personnel, infrastructure and other needs,” the report said. “Other cities with housing trust funds allow their councils far more leeway to adjust the revenue dedications to those funds.”  

Cook said that despite negative political analysis, the New Orleans City Council’s good standing in the New Orleans community and promotion of the measure led to its success. Councilmember Lesli Harris proposed the measure. 

“The execution of the Housing Trust Fund will be a transparent and effective process with real benefits,” Harris wrote in an Instagram post after the measure passed. “By strengthening our housing inventory, the Housing Trust Fund will ultimately strengthen our entire economy – something that will curb our declining population and bring New Orleanians back home.” 

New Orleans voters also passed the “Worker Bill of Rights” amendment which will now be embedded in a document regarding city function. This measure won 80% of the vote.  

In Getz’s research, she found that a lot of unions supported the measure. “Who am I to vote against [their interests]?” she said. 

The vote was symbolic; the bill of rights is not required for employers, but it outlines rights such as fair wages, paid leave, health care and union rights. 

“I didn’t really know how much it was symbolic versus an actual change in legislation, but I would have voted the same either way,” Getz said.  

The state of the New Orleans Public School Board is still up in the air; KaTrina Chantelle Griffin was elected to the 4th District seat, but Gabriela Biro and Eric Jones will compete in a runoff election for a seat in the 2nd District.  

The board is currently experiencing changes as the past of only charter schools in New Orleans is expanding to include some public schools, such as The Leah Chase School, which became non-charter in August. Griffin, however, was backed by a pro-charter organization, while her ousted opponent Donaldo Batiste wanted the district to run public schools. 

All school board candidates were Democrats.  

The runoff will take place on Dec. 7, because neither Biro nor Jones won more than half the vote on Nov. 5. The two knocked Chan Tucker out of the race for the 2nd District seat.