Black turnout surge and Republican drop-off reshaped the South in the 2026 midterms

When Mississippi Democrat Scott Colom edged Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by roughly 5,600 votes in a state Donald Trump carried by 22 points two years ago, it looked like an anomaly. It wasn't. The same two-part turnout story — Black voters showing up at near-presidential-year rates while Republican-leaning counties fell off a cliff — played out across six Southern states, producing an average 22-point swing toward Democrats, well above the national swing of about 14.5 points, according to analysis of the results.

The mechanics are straightforward. In the Deep South, turnout in counties that voted for Harris in 2024 declined by 19 percent compared to that presidential election. In counties that voted for Trump, the decline was 26 percent, according to wisevoter.com. That seven-point gap in drop-off, compounded across hundreds of counties, erased hundreds of thousands of Republican votes from the ledger before a single ballot was counted for margin.

At the same time, Black voters did something that almost never happens in a midterm: they nearly matched their own presidential-year turnout. According to estimates from Strength In Numbers cited by portside.org, Black voters in the Deep South turned out at about 96 percent of their 2024 presidential levels, compared to roughly 71 percent for white and other voters. In majority-Black counties, turnout ran at about 85 percent of 2024 levels; in white, non-Hispanic majority counties, it was 76 percent. The Black Belt — the multi-state arc of counties named for its dark, fertile soil and home to large Black populations — posted turnout about 8 percentage points higher than the rest of the Deep South.

The result was a dramatic shift in who actually cast ballots. Black voters made up 33 percent of Mississippi's electorate this year, up from 30 percent in 2024, according to estimates from the New York Times cited by portside.org. Across all five core Deep South states, the Black share of the electorate grew by roughly 3 to 4 points. Modeling by Strength In Numbers found that with 2024's electorate composition and this year's vote choices, Hyde-Smith would have won by about 4 percentage points. The shift in who showed up turned that into a Colom lead.

Organizers and candidates point to a single catalyst: the Supreme Court's April ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively gutted the last major enforcement provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Within weeks, Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana redrew congressional maps, slicing up majority-Black districts. The backlash was immediate and, by election night, measurable.

There is a direct correlation between the Callais decision, the behavior of these state assemblies, and Black voters turning out during the primary, and then the results that we saw on Tuesday.— Ashley England-Albright, co-founder and legal director, Black Voters Matter

Alabama offers the clearest case study. After Callais, the state reinstated an old congressional map that cut the Black voting-age population in Rep. Shomari Figures's 2nd Congressional District from 48.7 percent to 39.9 percent. Republicans expected that nearly 9-point reduction to cost Figures his seat. Instead, he won 53.8 percent of the vote — barely below his 54.6 percent under the previous map. His Republican opponent, Rhett Marques, acknowledged the dynamic in his concession speech, noting that Montgomery County turned out in numbers he could not overcome. According to preliminary tallies, Montgomery County cast nearly 80,000 ballots in this year's governor's race, up from under 58,000 four years ago — a 38 percent increase. Democratic straight-ticket ballots across the 14 counties in Figures's district nearly doubled from 2022, from about 50,000 to 90,000, while Republican straight-ticket ballots rose just 8 percent, according to portside.org.

Montgomery County came out in a large number, and we couldn't overcome it.— Rhett Marques, Republican candidate, Alabama's 2nd Congressional District

Statewide in Alabama, voter turnout increased on average by 65 percent compared to the 2022 midterms — from 28 percent to 44 percent — according to data reviewed by the Guardian. Black-majority turnout in Figures's district specifically increased by 81 percent. The three counties with the highest turnout in the district were all Black-majority.

The pattern extended beyond Alabama. In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews beat appointed Sen. Darline Graham by about 4.5 points in a state Trump carried by 18 points two years ago; without the Black turnout surge, according to Strength In Numbers calculations cited by portside.org, Andrews would have won by under a point. In Georgia, Black voters helped elect Keisha Lance Bottoms as governor — the first Black woman to hold that office — and keep Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in his seat by 14 points, even as Ossoff finished with roughly 79,000 fewer raw votes than Harris won in 2024. In North Carolina, former Gov. Roy Cooper won the Senate race by 20 points as his Republican opponent Michael Whatley trailed Trump's 2024 total by 1.25 million votes, according to wisevoter.com.

Nationally, Black voters supported Democratic House candidates at a margin of roughly 80 percentage points, according to Times Voter Trends cited by bostonglobe.com — a return to the levels Democrats enjoyed in 2020, after that margin dipped to 70 points in 2024 when Kamala Harris was on the ballot.

The surge did not arrive spontaneously. In the months before the election, church elders invoked memories of the Civil Rights Movement, students at historically Black colleges and universities organized marches and political events, and voting rights groups worked to connect federal policy — including the VRA ruling, high prices, and the dismantling of diversity programs — to the act of casting a ballot, according to the Boston Globe.

Anger alone does not build a movement. I think folks being able to really connect the dots is what really mobilizes people. This has been brewing.— Anneshia Hardy, voting rights organizer, Georgia and Alabama

What you saw was Black voters showing up in the face of an administration that has spent two years attacking our rights, weakening voter protections and redrawing maps specifically to diminish Black political power. Even in early voting, we were seeing a surge. We organized anyway, and we voted anyway.— Nadine Smith, president and CEO, Color of Change

The gains were not uniform. In Tennessee, the General Assembly carved Memphis — home to the highest concentration of Black Tennesseans — into three separate congressional districts, and the city is expected to be represented entirely by Republicans, according to the Boston Globe. The redistricting fight is far from over: voting rights groups have signaled they will continue to challenge maps in court and in future elections.

Voters went above and beyond to come out to say: We're going to elect a Congress that can begin the repair. We have to elect a Congress that's going to stop this deterioration of our rights.— Ashley Shelton, executive director, Power Coalition for Equity and Justice

Mississippi's Senate count remains open, with Colom's lead still subject to final tallies including mail-in and affidavit ballots. If his lead holds, he will be the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Mississippi since 1982 and the first Black man to represent the state in the U.S. Senate since 1901, according to portside.org.

Why it matters — The 2026 Southern results show that a Supreme Court ruling intended to weaken Black voting power may have instead galvanized the highest Black midterm turnout in decades — a dynamic that will shape redistricting fights, Senate control, and voting rights litigation for years.

Reported by nationhoodlab.org, portside.org, wisevoter.com, yahoo.com, theguardian.com, brennancenter.org, bostonglobe.com