Interesting results in Cajun Country

[Sol]

Last night I started looking through Parish results in Louisiana. Although the area was generally quite Democratic prior to democratization in the mid 20th century, there are quite a few interesting exceptions. Some of these, particularly those in the late 19th century, can be explaned by varying rates of black disenfranchisement, but some of them, especially in the 20s and 30s, are a little funnier. Here are some county maps from Wikipedia which show some interesting outcomes:

1916


As you can see, Wilson underperformed in some parts of Acadiana. Lafourche and Iberia Parishes voted for no candidate (aka a vote for the Progressive party nominee). None of this is too surprising as the Progressive was from Louisiana. Not totally sure what happened in Vernon Parish, may be a miscoloring. I don't have access to earlier county results on the atlas so idk.

1920


Now here it's where it gets a little funky. As you can see, Harding won quite a few parishes in Cajun country. I have no clue as to why; Wikipedia claims that Cajuns were offended by Woodrow Wilson feuding with Georges Clemenceau, but frankly that seems kind of a weird result unless there was some more overt Francophobia or Catholic hating going on in the Wilson administration or the Cox campaign--at least moreso than was usual for the time. It doesn't seem crazy to think that a political party with close ties to the KKK would have trouble winning Catholic voters. Harding didn't win all of Acadiana--presumably there were some Democratic machines, like Leander Perez's in Plaquemines Parish, which stopped anyone from voting for Republicans.

1924


As you can see, Davis did quite poorly again among Cajuns, albeit less so than Cox. He outright lost Assumption Parish, and quite a few other parishes, particularly those around Houma, had very narrow margins. I suppose it could be Catholic hating again though it's hard to say.

1928 and 1932 aren't too exciting; Smith and Roosevelt won every county.

1936, on the other hand...

As can be seen, Assumption Parish voted for Landon, and Lafourche Parish nearly did. Wikipedia says this was because of Democratic free trade policy regarding sugar, and as it can be seen, some parts of Cajun Country are sugar areas, while some aren't:

(map is from the contemporary era, but whatev. couldn't find anything for the 30s.) This isn't a great correspondance, but it isn't terrible either.

Anybody have any good explanation of this?

[DINGO Joe]

It's all about the sugar.  I don't know the specifics of trade policy back then, but a bull moose candidate actually got elected in that area in 1918 (he switched to the D to ensure he could stay in office, but the politics of sugar remained)

[Orser67]

I'm no expert in the politics of Louisiana in the 1910s, but the sugar issue matches up with my understanding of the era. I believe that the Louisiana senators were the only Democratic senators to vote against the Revenue Act of 1913, which lowered tariffs in favor of income taxes.

A quick google search turns up this JStor article that might go into detail on the tariff and Louisiana:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4231043?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[mianfei]

It's all about the sugar.  I don't know the specifics of trade policy back then, but a bull moose candidate actually got elected in that area in 1918 (he switched to the D to ensure he could stay in office, but the politics of sugar remained)

The main reason for the 1920 bolt was not exclusively the sugar issue, but equally or more that Woodrow Wilson was perceived as anti-French because of his bitter disagreement with Georges Benjamin Clemenceau over war and postwar policy. Wilson did not believe France was entitled to the Rhineland, Saar and Ruhr as Clemenceau did, and Cajun Louisiana sympathised strongly with Clemenceau.

In contrast, during World War II this region’s pro-France and anti-German sympathies caused it to behave like northern New England.

1920


Now here it's where it gets a little funky. As you can see, Harding won quite a few parishes in Cajun country. I have no clue as to why; Wikipedia claims that Cajuns were offended by Woodrow Wilson feuding with Georges Clemenceau, but frankly that seems kind of a weird result unless there was some more overt Francophobia or Catholic hating going on in the Wilson administration or the Cox campaign – at least more so than was usual for the time. It doesn't seem crazy to think that a political party with close ties to the KKK would have trouble winning Catholic voters. Harding didn't win all of Acadiana – presumably there were some Democratic machines, like Leander Perez's in Plaquemines Parish, which stopped anyone from voting for Republicans.

As I said before, there was no need for Wilson’s Francophobia to be overt – for the Cajuns it was enough that it was perceived Wilson did not agree with French demands and they would refuse to support him.

There are so many other issues of the Wilson administration, notably Prohibition and the 19th Amendment, which the devoutly Catholic Cajun parishes would have been extremely hostile to. Moreover, as they were less obsessed with racial issues as the rest of the Deep South, they felt they could afford the luxury of voting their views on these issues as other Southerners could not.