Democrats won back the South. Now their challenge is to keep it

Democrats made historic gains with voters in the Southern U.S. Now the party needs to figure out how to keep them. The U.S. South, the country’s fastest-growing region, has been out of reach for Democrats for a generation — and even then, it was a very different Democratic Party. The last two Democrats to represent South Carolina and Mississippi in the U.S. Senate were, at one point in their careers, segregationists. But Democratic candidates rode President Donald Trump’s plunging popularity and economic frustrations to win statewide races in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Mississippi. They narrowly missed Senate victories in Louisiana and Florida. GOP House strongholds throughout the region flipped, as did governorships and state assemblies. In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom became the first Black elected to the Senate from the state since 1874, during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. A Supreme Court decision weakening voting rights protections helped mobilize Black voters across the South, and a surge in voting among Blacks in Mississippi was crucial to Colom’s victory. In numerous Black-majority counties where Colom dominated, turnout nearly matched the turnout for the 2024 presidential election, which is unusual in a midterm. In the state’s majority-Black counties, turnout surged 14% from the 2022 congressional midterm, outpacing a 10% increase statewide. Democrats’ success across the region came on the cheap for a cash-strapped party. Little investment was made from the national level, with the party significantly outraised by Republicans. That left many candidates to mostly fend for themselves, but the national environment mattered more and helped them overcome redistricting efforts in some states that were meant to leave Democrats at a disadvantage. “I don’t think you’re ever going to have an environment that’s this challenging for Republicans again,” Atlanta-based Democratic consultant Fred Hicks said. Louisiana Representative Troy Carter, the incoming chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, noted the irony of the outcome after many GOP-run states sought to redraw congressional boundaries, saying that the next Congressional Black Caucus will be the largest ever and the Houses will have its first Black speaker. “We saw the South speak on election night,” he said. To sustain their success, however, regional Democrats say the national party needs to focus on a middle-of-the-road approach focused on the economy. The party also needs to invest more heavily in moderate Southern candidates as the Trump era recedes. In particular, the party failed to invest in Louisiana, where candidate Jamie Davis lost by just 1 percentage point to Republican Julia Letlow. The major Senate Democrat super political action committee spent only $2 million in Mississippi according to AdImpact and they didn’t make that expenditure until two weeks before the election. That is compared to $71 million in Ohio and $53 million in Iowa. They spent less than $1 million in South Carolina and only $50,000 in North Carolina. On the House side, the main Democratic super PAC invested in Texas, Florida and North Carolina but none of the other Southern states in any significant way. “This is a clarion call for Democrats to treat South Carolina as an investment and not an expense,” Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist in the state, said. Generational shift Democratic control in the South began to erode in the mid-1960s with the passage of civil rights legislation. President Richard Nixon then launched a Southern strategy to break Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition of Northern liberals and Southern populist segregationists. To maintain Democrats’ new momentum in the South, strategists said it is especially important for the party to support state legislative candidates, building a farm team of future state and national candidates centered on the kind of simple, centrist message that worked this year. Perhaps the single most effective political ad of the cycle came from Colom in deep red Mississippi, where he laced into a comment by Republican incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith that voters “have so many proteins to choose from” in the face of elevated beef prices. His ad, which went viral on social media, featured ordinary voters saying they would rather “pick another senator.” That kind of economic-focused approach reaches both Republicans and independents, North Carolina Senator-elect Roy Cooper said. “I do think we need investments here, in candidates, who can speak to a wide variety of people, to the unaffiliated, to Democrats, and Republicans, and to try to stay away from these issues that divide us,” he told reporters on Election Day. Throughout the campaign, Cooper maintained an emphatic focus on kitchen-table economic issues, touring the state to hold bluntly themed “Make Stuff Cost Less” rallies. Well before the final fervor of the election, Cooper’s pragmatism and ability to make deals across the partisan divide appealed to voters who came to see him. “We’ve had 25 years of divisiveness on Facebook and it has not made our problems any better,” Kevin Adams, a local church official, said at a Cooper rally in July in Wadesboro, a rural town of 5,000 in the Piedmont region about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Charlotte. “He has a track record of being a Democrat, a traditional Democrat, who works on major issues that impact what should be Democratic voters.” Cooper told reporters he’ll work with Trump boost funding for healthcare and end the Iran war to lower costs. “Democrats need a message that goes everywhere and that’s what we are learning in these Southern races,” said Jeff Allen, Cooper’s campaign manager. “We have to have a broad economic message.” In South Carolina, pediatrician Annie Andrews won by pitching herself as an independent who happened to be on the Democratic ticket, making Republican voters feel they could vote for her without feeling they were sacrificing their conservative values. Her key campaign messaging was centered on the cost of living, data centers and opposition to the political establishment. Voters in the state said they didn’t like that Senator Darline Graham had been installed by the powers-that-be in Washington after her brother, Senator Lindsey Graham, died. Sarah Feuerstein, a South Carolina Democrat, said on election night that Andrews won over members of her family by promising to be a centrist. “Everyone’s just sick of everyone being so divided, and we just want to kind of meet back in the middle somewhere,” she said. The new moderate Southern members provide a counterweight to the Democratic Socialist and more progressive voices coming into the party from mostly Northern states and the campaign themes they ran on could influence who emerges as the party’s standard-bearer in the 2028 presidential election. Already, likely incoming House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries is pushing back on calls from progressives to impeach Trump again, saying the party will be focused on issues like restoring healthcare cuts and ending the Iran war, which has spiked fuel prices. That approach reflects an understanding of why Southern Democrats won on Election Day, strategists said. Republicans in the region say their party is poised for a resurgence, especially if Democrats pursue policies out of step with the region’s more conservative leanings. “Trump has created an incredible boon for them,” said North Carolina native and former top House Republican aide Doug Heye said. “Many of those elected in the blue wave will be gone in two years.” House Democratic Campaign Chairwoman Suzan DelBene of Washington said the party succeeded by recruiting candidates that fit their districts rather than “cookie-cutter candidates” and focusing on local needs. She said Democrats worked to mobilize Latino voters as well as Blacks in the region. Many Latinos were outraged by the Trump administration pi