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Louisiana House elections, 2006


The first round of the Louisiana House election of 2006 were held on Tuesday, November 7, 2006. The terms of all seven Representatives to the United States House of Representatives will expire on January 3, 2007, and will be put up for contest. The winning candidates will serve a two-year term from January 3, 2007 to January 3, 2009. If necessary, a runoff round will be held on December 9, 2006.


Louisiana uses a unique voting system to determine its representation in the U.S. Congress. Elections in Louisiana—with the exception of U.S. presidential elections—follow a variation of the open primary system called the jungle primary. Candidates of any and all parties are listed on one ballot; voters need not limit themselves to the candidates of one party. Unless one candidate takes more than 50% of the vote in the first round, a run-off election is then held between the top two candidates, who may in fact be members of the same party. This means that the outcome of some races might not be known until over a month later than the rest of the country.

The Louisiana races, especially those in the southern portion of the state, were impacted to some extent as a result of Hurricane Katrina, as well as Hurricane Rita, both of which have caused massive damage within Louisiana. For example, most of New Orleans' majority African-American communities were displaced by Katrina.

All Louisiana Congressmen won re-election and avoided a run-off except Democrat William Jefferson of New Orleans, under investigation for corruption. He won a run-off against fellow Democrat Karen Carter. As of 2016, this is the last election in which Democrats won more than one congressional district in Louisiana.

Note: For calculating the totals of the Democratic and Republican parties with regard to the 2nd district, the jungle primary results, not the runoff results, are used.

Incumbent Republican Congressman Bobby Jindal, first elected in 2004, faced no serious challenge from Democratic challengers David Gereighty, an electrical engineer, and Stacey Tallitsch, a computer engineer, or from Libertarian opponent Peter Beary. This highly conservative district is based around Lake Pontchartrain and the suburbs of New Orleans and Jindal was re-elected with nearly ninety percent of the vote.


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