The Louisiana Senate Race Was Decided by the Law That Removed Bill Cassidy

On the night of May 16, Bill Cassidy stood in a Baton Rouge catering hall and conceded. Cassidy finished third. He had taken 24.8 percent of the vote in Louisiana’s first closed Republican primary, behind Julia Letlow and John Fleming, and the runoff went on without him. He had held the seat since 2015.

The law was House Bill 17, written by Representative Julie Emerson and signed by Governor Jeff Landry on January 22, 2024. It replaced the all-candidate primary Louisiana had used for fifty years. Under the old system, one ballot held every candidate and the top two went to a runoff; under the new one, each party holds its own primary for Congress, the Senate, the state Supreme Court, the Public Service Commission and the state education board. It shut out the 822,000 voters registered with no party, who under the old system could vote in the primary without joining one. It took effect on January 1, 2026, two years after it was signed. Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser put the purpose bluntly: “I think the real push for this was to beat Bill Cassidy for Senate. Let’s call it like it is.” Senate President Cameron Henry has suggested the legislature will likely reverse the change after the 2026 election.

On November 3, in the 2026 Louisiana Senate race, Letlow beat Davis by 25,857 votes, 745,963 to 720,106, a margin of 1.8 points in a state Donald Trump carried by 22 points two years earlier. She became the first Republican woman elected to the Senate from Louisiana. Davis refused to concede on election night, telling supporters in Baton Rouge, “This thing is way, way, way too tight to call,” and conceded the next morning, with a warning for the governor: “Jeff Landry, you’re on notice, buddy.”

Pollster John Couvillon read the returns race by race. Turnout ran about 49 percent, up from 45.8 percent in the last Senate race in 2022. Thirty-six percent of the vote came early. Davis won it 53.5 to 46.5. The 64 percent that voted on Election Day went 53 to 47 for Letlow. The white vote went 71 to 29 for Letlow, and the Black vote went 90 to 10 for Davis, which left the final electorate 65 percent white and 30 percent Black. Louisiana Democrats have a formula for winning statewide: 90 percent of the Black vote, 30 percent of the white vote, and Black voters making up about a third of the electorate. Davis hit the first number. He missed the white vote by a point, 29 against 30, and the Black share by two to three, 30 against the third the formula calls for.

In New Orleans, the argument after the count was about the votes that never arrived. A local creator, jdfromthe504, wrote that the Davis campaign had decided it did not want Black New Orleans’s help to win the election. The decision, he said, might have been its biggest mistake. “Respectfully, no…having white women canvas the 7th Ward is part of the problem,” he posted. “We could have got hommie them 26k votes.” The number he named is 143 more than the margin. His point matches Couvillon’s arithmetic: Davis won the Black vote by the margin the formula demands, but Black voters were 30 percent of the electorate, not the third the formula calls for. On WWL Radio’s Facebook page, Michele Monet wrote: “Davis 49.1% Letlow 50.9% I’d say Jamie the farmer did excellent. It wasn’t a smash out and that means something.” The forecasters had called the seat safe.

The map moved with him. Eight parishes that backed Trump in 2024 voted for Davis, including Jefferson, which flipped by nearly 10,000 votes, and St. Bernard, which Davis carried by 12 votes after Trump won it by nearly 30 points. Evangeline Parish moved 28 points toward the Democrats, the second-biggest shift in the state. Trump carried Lafayette Parish by 31 points. Letlow won it by 10. Under a local news post about that shift, Nicholas Hernandez wrote: “I know stark republicans who voted for Davis. They just didn’t like Letlow.” The exit poll put a number on it: Davis won 9 percent of Republicans, and Couvillon had warned before Election Day that 10 to 20 percent of Republican early voters were defecting.

On April 29, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map in Louisiana v. Callais, ruling 6 to 3 that the second majority-Black district the map created was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, and Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The next day, Governor Landry suspended the closed primaries for the U.S. House, and the state told voters the House races on their ballots would not be counted, though nearly 179,000 ballots had already been cast, about 53,000 of them by mail. Asked on 60 Minutes what would happen to them, Landry said they would be discarded and the voters would vote again in November. The legislature then passed Act 7, moving the House races to an open primary on November 3 and a general election on December 12. The Senate ran under the new rules and lost its incumbent.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved Louisiana from safe Republican to likely on October 30 and to lean Republican on November 2. The Cook Political Report kept it solid Republican to the end. The PoliAgg model put the Republican margin at 27.1 points. The actual margin was 1.8. The only polls in the final week had the race tied: Hart Research at 45 to 45, Lincoln Park Strategies at 47 to 47. Davis raised about $5 million to Letlow’s $7.1 million through mid-October, but in the third quarter he out-raised her three to one, with more than 90 percent of his donations from individual donors.

Davis lost by 25,857 votes. His 720,106 votes were more than any Black candidate has ever won in Louisiana. Cleo Fields held the record with 565,861 in the 1995 governor’s runoff. Davis also won 172,279 more votes than Jeff Landry did to take the governor’s mansion in 2023. He conceded on Wednesday morning. He has left open a run for governor in 2027. Under the video of his election-night speech, Taylor Alexia wrote: “That’s our future governor and the man we need.” Voters also passed Amendment 4, a lifetime term limit for governors, by 56 to 44 percent, though whether it applies to former governors or only future ones is a legal fight.

The results remain unofficial until the Louisiana secretary of state certifies them. The six House seats will be filled under the old jungle-primary rules.