It’s official: for the first time in around 150 years, Louisiana has more registered Republicans than Democrats in the electorate, and the implications are significant.

Official beginning-of-month statistics give Republicans a lead of over 2,000 registrants over Democrats. Compared with the beginning of the year, the GOP has added over 12,000 voters while Democrats have lost over 18,000. As the electorate increased by around 6,000, this means that gains among all other voters made up the 12,000 or so difference.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of the shift. Not even two decades ago, when Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal became the first lifelong Republican to win the Governor’s Mansion, Democrats held a two-to-one advantage (and there were 134,000 fewer registrants then). That means the GOP has increased 52 percent since then, while Democrats have dropped 41 percent. Even more dramatically, 65 years ago Democrats comprised 99 percent of the electorate.

A major portion of the reason derives from the flat-out sprint to the far left that national Democrats have made, with state party elected officials and activists largely following. The party left behind a large chunk of Louisianans who, unlike voters in every other state back then, operated within an electoral system that didn’t award parties registrants on the basis of the candidates they presented. The nonpartisan blanket primary system, still in effect for most elections within the state, didn’t penalize voters for not having their registration in line with their voting behavior, but did neuter parties by denying them control over whom they could grant their most important inducement: a nomination for a general election.

So, since the legacy of Democrat registration existed, unless they felt compelled to vote in a presidential preference closed primary of their preferred, not labeled, party, voters had no incentive to change registrations, leaving a huge latent registry of Democrats even though they often, even exclusively, voted for Republican candidates in the general election and runoffs. But this year, with other federal races, multiple state executive offices, and Supreme Court positions added to presidential primaries (even as House of Representatives contests will temporarily remain subject to blanket primaries), a much greater incentive emerged to put registration in line with voting behavior.

Certainly, that had an impact. The middle of April marked the end of registration changes to participate in the May party primaries, and GOP registration changes from the beginning of the year through May averaged a gain of about 1,000 each month. Democrat losses averaged about 2,500 monthly, and all others (97 percent of whom were no party and therefore could choose one party’s ballot on which to vote in both the May primary and end-of-June runoff) jumped a little over a thousand a month. In other words, Democrats appeared to be switching to both the GOP and no-party status, prompted by the new rule, and some even were falling off the rolls entirely.

Yet it’s obviously more than that. Since May, Republicans leapt almost 10,000 while Democrats fell 8,000 and no-party folks gained 7,000. It’s possible that some portion of those moving about were Democrats abandoning that party to vote in the GOP Senate runoff, although Democrats had their own Senate runoff. The size of the movements, fivefold more for the GOP and almost twice as much for Democrats, however, suggests continued momentum favoring Republicans and penalizing Democrats. With nominations settled, it will be interesting to see how the pattern changes, or whether it does, until November (even December, since delayed House elections possibly could see runoffs then), as excitement in the electorate builds (typically, registrations climb throughout an election year until voting occurs and ends, and then they decline for several months until the next cycle).

No doubt the introduction of party nominations for some offices accelerated the process, but we can expect to see continued movement away from Democrats and towards Republicans (and signing on to no party) as long as the former continues careening to the far left and the latter keeps doing a better job of appealing to the median Louisiana voter.