[4][5][6][7] The largest incorporated city in Ascension Parish, Gonzales, is celebrated as the "Jambalaya Capital of the World".

[8] Early European settlers of the area that was developed as Ascension and Gonzales were, for the most part, of French and Spanish ancestry.

Among the projects and plans carried out by Luis de Unzaga 'le Conciliateur' while he was governor of Louisiana between 1769 and 1777 was the promotion of new settlements by Europeans, among them were French Acadians and Malaga in the fertile Mississippi region and more specifically in the Unzaga Post or 'Puesto de Unzaga' that he created in 1771 in Pointe Coupee, the parish of Saint Gabriel in 1773 and Fort Manchac in 1776; the Ascension people occupied land at the confluence of the aforementioned European settlements.

With the greater diversification of the United States at the 2020 census,[22][23] non-Hispanic white residents were 62.96% of the total population.

[25] Parish-wide Protestant statistics reflect an increase in non- or inter-denominational Christianity throughout Louisiana, outgrowing Methodism as the second-largest Protestant group for the state per the Association of Religion Data Archives 2020 religion census; the growth of non/inter-denominational Christianity for the area represented a broader trend nationwide, where the movement began to constitute the largest segment of American Protestantism.

On March 8, 2017, Ascension Parish President Kenneth Paul "Kenny" Matassa (born September 12, 1949), a Republican,[28] along with Olin Glenn Berthelot (born August 1948), a Democratic[29] businessman from Gonzales, faced indictment in an attempted bribery scheme.

The grand jury released its true bill to Judge Tess Stromberg of the 23rd Judicial District Court in Ascension, Assumption, and St. James parishes.

Matassa and Berthelot allegedly bribed the Democrat A. Wayne Lawson with offers of money and a government job to drop out of the city council race in Division E against Bourque,[30] who nevertheless won reelection with 61 percent of the ballots cast.

[30] Matassa was instead acquitted in July 2018 of the election bribery allegations and returned to his duties as parish president with a legal cloud lifted from his shoulders.