Louisiana's 2nd congressional district contains nearly all of the city of New Orleans and stretches west and north to Baton Rouge.

From the 1960s onward, however, white conservatives began splitting their tickets and voting Republican, gradually switching outright to the GOP.

In 2008, after a federal grand jury indicted nine-term incumbent congressman William J. Jefferson on sixteen felony charges related to corruption the year prior, Joseph Cao was elected as the first Republican to represent the 2nd congressional district and most of New Orleans in more than a century.

In 2003, it was pushed into the West Bank portion of Jefferson Parish and South Kenner, which have a higher proportion of white residents.

[4] After the 2010 census, the legislature pushed the 2nd slightly to the west, picking up a portion of Baton Rouge–essentially, most of the capital's majority-black precincts.