Louisiana saw the lowest voter turnout in a decade

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - While gubernatorial elections have the potential to bring out at least 50% of voters to the polls, this one was nowhere close. Louisiana has roughly 3 million registered voters and only 36% showed up on Saturday, paving the way for Republican Jeff Landry to win the governor’s race without a runoff.

This election saw the lowest voter turnout in a decade following closely behind the 2011 gubernatorial election where Bobby Jindal, who faced no serious competition, sailed to victory and won re-election. Though Democrat Shawn Wilson got the most votes in East Baton Rouge Parish, less than 50% of the voters here showed up.

Congressman Troy Carter (D) spoke about the low turnout at Shawn Wilson’s watch party Saturday evening.

“Well, today was a bit of an anomaly. We have a Saints’ game in Texas, we have LSU, we have Grambling, we have Southern, and there’s a lot that people have to choose from. And unfortunately, it appears that because the turnout has been so low, people chose to go to some of the sporting events,” said Carter.

While low turnout was anticipated given the LSU vs. Auburn game, Southern’s homecoming and the Saints’ game, folks were still stunned to see Jeff Landry win the race outright.

“For whatever reason voters were not energized, we voted just over 35%. Which means we have elected a governor for potentially eight years, at least four years, and fewer than one out of five eligible voters cast ballots for him,” said WAFB Political Analyst Jim Engster.

While the numbers in the primary were nothing to write home about, candidates and political pundits hope the general election will have a better outcome on November 18.

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