Black voter turnout increased in every southern US state, where Republicans were accused of redrawing electoral maps to “diminish black political power” following a seismic Supreme Court ruling.
Democrats flipped or held seats in Alabama, Texas and Florida with the support of this voting bloc, building on a dedicated, decades-long movement to protect and strengthen black political power in the region.
The redistricting campaign has “blown up” in the faces of Republican lawmakers, said Ashley K Shelton, CEO and president of the Power Coalition for Equality and Justice in Louisiana. “There’s nowhere to go except from there,” she said. “We still have to fight to protect representation. We have to continue to fight for that representation.
“Let’s be clear: Voters overcame incredible suppression across the country, and particularly in the South, to ensure they could vote with their voice.”
This comes after the Supreme Court effectively gutted a significant section of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in April with Louisiana v. Callais, rendering ineffective the last powerful provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 that prevents racial discrimination in voting.
Even before Callais, Republican lawmakers in Texas, following Trump’s directives, had redrawn the maps in an attempt to consolidate their party’s political power. With the Supreme Court’s decision, several Southern states – Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana – did the same., redesign predominantly black neighborhoods.
Voters and voting rights groups across the South were outraged — both by the Supreme Court’s decision and by the actions of Republican lawmakers, leading to protests across the region, including All Roads Lead to the South in Alabama, which drew thousands from across the country.
But Tuesday’s midterm elections offer the first opportunity to see the impact of redistricting efforts on voters.
“There is a direct correlation between the Callais decision, the behavior of these state assemblies, and black voters went to the primaries, and then the results we saw on Tuesday,” said Ashley England-Albright, co-founder and legal director of Black Voters Matter (BVM).
In 2024, Black voters in Alabama celebrated the election of Shomari Figures, who is Black, as the first member of Congress in the state’s newly drawn majority.–Black second congressional district.
The district – which includes most of the state capital of Montgomery – “For years, they haven’t had the representation they need to get things done, like more schools, better housing, things like that,” said Jamey Thompson, an elected official in a local district. school board that year, said at the time.
But, after Callais, Alabama quickly reinstated an old map that returned Figures’ district to one that a court ruled had diminished the influence of black voters in the state’s Black Belt.
Yet facing a tougher election campaign after his district was redrawn to be more Republican-friendly, the numbers – a democrat – won by nearly eight points on Tuesday.
Alabama’s majority-black counties, like elsewhere in the South, saw particularly high turnout this election: Turnout increased by an average of 65% statewide, from 28% in 2022 to 44% in 2026, according to data reviewed by the Guardian.
The majority-black turnout rate in Figures’ district increased by 81 percent. The three counties with the highest voter turnout in the district were majority black.
“A lot of what this administration has done is remove the protections that give us access to the ballot., while inundating us with propaganda that tells us it doesn’t matter,” said Nadine Smith, president and CEO of Color of Change, which worked to mobilize southern voters before the election. “What you saw was Black voters coming forward in the face of an administration that spent two years attacking our rights, weakening voter protections and redrawing the maps specifically to diminish Black political power.
“Even in early voting, we saw a surge. We organized anyway, and we voted anyway. Even in the places where they, not all, but most of the places where they redrew the maps, they couldn’t stop the momentum.”
A July study analyzing voter turnout in the South during primaries indicated that Callais, even then, was driving increased turnout among black voters.
Greene County, Alabama, surpassed 50% turnout in the primary election, while Bullock, Lowndes, Macon and Montgomery counties – all part of Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District – also saw significant turnout. Bullock County, which is more than 70% Black, had the third-highest turnout in the state.
In Louisiana, which triggered the Callais decision, black voters made up 35.7 percent of the primary electorate in the primaries, despite making up only 32.1 percent of the population.
Louisiana maintained increased turnout among black voters until this week’s midterm elections, when more black voters cast early ballots than in any other midterm or gubernatorial election in the past decade.
“The turnout and the exit polls that we heard from our partners and the people on the ground that we had were that people were not going to allow the court’s decision to undermine the power and authority that they had with their votes,” said Sarah Whittington, advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana.
Southern organizers have worked for decades to mobilize voters. The fall of the VRA reminded them how hard previous generations had fought to preserve it.
Five months before the VRA was signed, approximately 600 people protesting for voting rights on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama were brutally attacked by law enforcement officers, who confronted them with tear gas, batons and other weapons.
“Bloody Sunday,” as the march is remembered because of the violence of the attacks, was a turning point in the civil rights movement. It’s one of the battles that voting rights advocates have frequently waged to remind voters of what’s at stake.
“That’s the lesson of the South,” Smith said, of Color of Change. “There is power in community, in connecting with each other. We saw HBCU students go to the polls. We saw so much of that sense of, ‘I’m not just voting for the candidates in front of me. I’m voting to express my love for my community, for my people, for my family. I will do everything in my power, and my power is considerable to make the journey more humane.'”
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