Louisiana elections

What it covers

The Louisiana scraper returns election results from the Louisiana Secretary of State Graphical results site at voterportal.sos.la.gov. It covers all elections listed in the site’s dropdown — primaries, runoffs, generals, and special elections — from 1982 to the present.

Results are scraped from non-Parish tabs (Congressional, Statewide, Legislative, Multiparish) for statewide totals, and from the Parish tab for parish-level breakdowns. Voter turnout percentages are captured at the page level when published by the site.

Note: The Louisiana SOS site is a JavaScript-rendered AngularJS application. All scraping uses a headless Chromium browser via Playwright. Parish scraping is parallelised across up to max_workers browsers (default 2). Louisiana has 64 parishes.

Arguments

Argument	Default	Description
`state`	—	`"LA"`, `"louisiana"`, or `"Louisiana"`
`year_from`	`NULL`	Start year, inclusive; `NULL` = no lower bound (data goes back to 1982)
`year_to`	`NULL`	End year, inclusive; `NULL` = current calendar year
`level`	`"all"`	`"all"` — statewide + parish; `"state"` — statewide only (much faster); `"parish"` — parish-level only
`max_workers`	`4L`	Parallel Chromium browsers for parish scraping (capped at 2 internally for LA)

Examples

Statewide + parish results for a single year

res <- scrape_elections(state = "LA", year_from = 2024, year_to = 2024)

# Statewide candidate totals
res$state %>%
  filter(office_level == "Federal") %>%
  select(election_name, office, candidate, party, votes, vote_pct, winner)

# Parish-level breakdown
res$parish %>%
  filter(office == "President of the United States") %>%
  select(parish, candidate, party, votes, vote_pct) %>%
  arrange(parish, desc(votes))

Statewide totals only (faster — skips parish scraping)

state_df <- scrape_elections(
  state     = "LA",
  year_from = 2024,
  year_to   = 2024,
  level     = "state"
)

state_df %>%
  select(election_name, office_level, office, candidate, party, votes, vote_pct, winner)

Multi-year scrape

res <- scrape_elections(
  state     = "LA",
  year_from = 2020,
  year_to   = 2024,
  level     = "state"
)

res %>%
  filter(office == "President of the United States") %>%
  select(election_name, election_year, candidate, party, votes, vote_pct, winner)

Filter to a specific parish

res <- scrape_elections(state = "LA", year_from = 2023, year_to = 2023)

res$parish %>%
  filter(parish == "Orleans Parish") %>%
  select(election_name, office, candidate, party, votes, vote_pct) %>%
  arrange(office, desc(votes))

Filter by office level

res <- scrape_elections(state = "LA", year_from = 2024, year_to = 2024)

# Federal races only
res$state %>%
  filter(office_level == "Federal") %>%
  select(election_name, office, candidate, party, votes, vote_pct, winner)

# State-level races
res$state %>%
  filter(office_level == "State") %>%
  select(election_name, office, candidate, party, votes, vote_pct, winner)

Output columns

`$state` (when `level = "all"` or `"state"`)

Column	Description
`state`	State abbreviation (`"LA"`)
`election_name`	Human-readable election name (e.g. `"November 5, 2024 General Election"`)
`election_year`	Calendar year of the election
`election_date`	Date of the election
`tab`	Source tab from the SOS site (e.g. `"Congressional"`, `"Statewide"`)
`office_level`	`"Federal"`, `"State"`, or `"Local"`
`office`	Office title (the part before `--`, e.g. `"District Judge"` or `"President of the United States"`)
`office_detail`	Court, district, or seat qualifier from the office title (e.g. `"23rd Judicial District Court, ES 2, Div. F"`); `NA` when not present
`candidate`	Candidate name
`party`	Full party name (e.g. `"Republican"`, `"Democratic"`)
`votes`	Vote total
`vote_pct`	Percentage of votes within the contest
`winner`	`TRUE` if the candidate won
`precincts_reporting`	Precincts reporting for the contest
`precincts_expected`	Total precincts expected for the contest
`voter_turnout_pct`	Page-level voter turnout percentage; `NA` when not published

`$parish` (when `level = "all"` or `"parish"`)

Column	Description
`state`	State abbreviation (`"LA"`)
`election_name`	Human-readable election name
`election_year`	Calendar year of the election
`election_date`	Date of the election
`parish`	Parish name (e.g. `"Orleans Parish"`)
`office_level`	`"Federal"`, `"State"`, or `"Local"`
`office`	Office title (part before `--`)
`office_detail`	Court, district, or seat qualifier; `NA` when not present
`candidate`	Candidate name
`party`	Full party name
`votes`	Parish-level vote total
`vote_pct`	Percentage of votes within the contest for this parish
`parish_winner`	`TRUE` if the candidate won within this parish
`precincts_reporting`	Precincts reporting in this parish
`precincts_expected`	Total precincts expected in this parish
`parish_voter_turnout_pct`	Parish-level voter turnout percentage; `NA` when not published

Performance notes

level = "state" is much faster. Parish scraping opens up to max_workers parallel Chromium browsers across Louisiana’s 64 parishes. A full state + parish scrape for one year typically takes 15–40 minutes. Use level = "state" when parish breakdowns are not needed.
Multiple elections per year. The Louisiana SOS site lists all elections for a given year (primaries, runoffs, generals, specials). All are scraped and combined in the output.
Cross-tab deduplication. Some races (e.g. Multiparish offices) appear in multiple tabs. The scraper automatically deduplicates these, keeping the highest-priority tab’s data.
Long history. The dropdown goes back to 1982; however, older elections may have sparser data or slightly different page layouts.
Turnout data. The voter_turnout_pct and parish_voter_turnout_pct columns are NA for elections where the site does not publish turnout.