2024 Louisiana Survey Shows Continued Perception that State is Headed in the Wrong Direction

June 6, 2024

BATON ROUGE—Researchers from the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication released the first report of the 2024 Louisiana Survey. Findings show most Louisiana residents think the state is heading in the wrong direction, but their perceptions of the economy and confidence in state government have improved.

The 2024 Louisiana Survey includes two distinct efforts to sample residents of the state and conduct interviews. The Louisiana Survey polled 511 adult residents from across the state via telephone about how they view their government and its policies. The survey was conducted from March 20 to April 23, 2024, and the total sample has a +/- 5.6% margin of error. Additionally, the Louisiana Survey polled 540 adult residents in a parallel survey administered online. The survey was conducted from March 25 to April 3, 2024, and the total sample has a +/- 6% margin of error. The report describes results from the traditional telephone-based survey but also presents results of the online survey.

Findings from the first of three reports indicate the following views on state issues:

Sixty-one percent (61%) of Louisiana residents say the state is heading in the wrong direction. This is the third consecutive year in which the share of people saying “wrong direction” outnumbers the share saying “right direction” by at least 30 percentage points.
Crime tops the list of problems the public is concerned about, with 28% saying it is the most important problem for the state government to tackle in 2024, up from 19% last year.
Although only 36% of Louisiana residents express confidence in the government to address their concerns effectively, this is eight percentage points higher than it was a year ago and 11 percentage points higher than what it was in 2022 when it hit its lowest point in the history of the Louisiana Survey.
The state index of consumer sentiment is 57.8, an improvement over 53.5 last year and 50.3 in 2022—a sign that state residents view their financial situations and the economy as a whole less pessimistically than in recent years.
Most residents of Louisiana give high evaluations to their local neighborhoods as a place to live and to the state’s public colleges and universities. They have less positive views of the state’s coastal protection and restoration efforts, the quality of the environment, the quality of healthcare and the quality of the state as a place to live. They evaluate the public K-12 schools in the state, state efforts at economic development and infrastructure especially negatively.

Michael Henderson, Ph.D., director of the Louisiana Survey, is available for interviews. Contact acharbonnet1@lsu.edu to schedule.

The Louisiana Survey has been conducted since 2003, establishing rich longitudinal measures of public opinion in Louisiana. The mission of the Louisiana Survey is to establish benchmarks as well as to capture change in residents’ assessments of state government services. The survey is further dedicated to tracking public opinion on contemporary policy issues that face the state. Each iteration of the Louisiana Survey contains core items designed to serve as barometers of public sentiment, including assessments of whether the state is heading in the right direction or wrong direction, perceptions about the most important problems facing the state, as well as evaluations of public revenue sources and spending priorities.

The survey is a project of the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs, an integral part of the Manship School of Mass Communication. The Reilly Center’s mission is to generate thoughtful programs, dialogue and research about mass communication and its many-faceted relationships with social, economic and political issues.

Read the first Louisiana Survey report on the LSU Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs website.

For more information, contact acharbonnet1@lsu.edu.

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